Jumping Currents
by bayumlikedayum
Summary: He doesn't like stuffed bunnies or having to be rescued.
1. First Impressions

**A/N;** This is just me testing the waters. I may take it down, I may decide to continue it. It all depends on how this goes. We'll see.

Read and Review! (:

**Chapter 1**** - Fi(r)st Impressions**

I found him in an power line tower that stretched to the sky. I would say that sparks flew as soon as we touched and our connection was electric, but there were sparks way before I even set eyes upon him let alone touched him, and he was unconscious in the first place.

A few hours later, I would be wishing that he had stayed that way.

**...**

You could say I brought it upon myself, rescuing him like I did, like some lost puppy who looked really cute and pitiful when wet. And the last thing he could possibly ever be right then was cute, pitiful, or wet; he had small scabs clotting to form scabs and bruises swelling across his face from some fight or another, his face bore an expression of obstinacy despite his unconsciousness, and he obviously wasn't wet, since he'd just been pulled out of an electrical tower. Not to mention the fact that his hair looked like Einstein's.

I don't know why I did it; but the next thing I knew, I was in my apartment, and I had put him on the couch, with a pillow underneath his head and everything. If only he had opened his perfect lips before then and spoken, I wouldn't have taken him into my house and home.

As soon as I was done pulling up his head and sliding the pillow underneath, I sat down in a chair nearby, and I started thinking for the first time that day.

He had to have enemies, or else he wouldn't have gotten stuck in an electrical tower. He couldn't have been diving out of a plane or anything, since he didn't have a parachute. Someone could have pushed him out of a plane, but the chances were, he wouldn't have survived the fall, even with the electrical tower in the way.

So how did he get in the tower? He could be a Jumper; but why would he jump himself into an electrical tower, and why would any self-respecting paladin keep a Jumper alive? That didn't make sense. He could be a paladin, but why would any self-respecting Jumper keep a paladin alive? That didn't make sense either.

The entire fucking situation didn't make sense.

And who was he, anyway? No ID in his beat-up leather jacket; maybe if I was the fucking FBI, I could have discovered his identity by his dental floss or something, but he didn't have any of that on him either, and I wasn't the fucking FBI.

I was spared having to think anymore by the sound of his faint groan. Just a single groan; that was all that escaped those perfect lips. For the moment. There was about to be a whole hell of a lot more coming out.

"Where the fuck-"

"Paris." I answered helpfully before he could complete the question.

He was up faster than you could blink, grabbing my throat in a vice-like grip that wasn't conducive to the notion of speaking.

"Gggguuugggg." I moaned.

"Who the fuck are _you_?" His eyes were wide, his fingers too firm for my liking, and his stance steady. Adrenaline, perhaps? I didn't like this position.

"Agggggg-" The pressure released _juuuuust_ enough for me to talk. "Ahhhhnnnndreuuugh. Ahhgggndy. Nice to meet you - ugggh."

Apparently he didn't think the same, since his fingers tightened again. Manners, boy; learn some fucking manners!

"How did you find me?"

Spots were starting to appear in front of my vision; and to be completely honest, I was fucking _tired _of the guy with his hand around my throat as if I was some kind of assassin who pulled him out of a electrical tower so I could kill him as soon as he wakes up.

Without warning, I drew my arm back and hit him square in the eye with all my current available strength, which wasn't much, since my oxygen was getting to the point of depletion. It was enough for him to drop me, and that was enough for me to suck in greedy gasps of air.

"I didn't 'find you', dumb jackass. You were stuck in an electrical tower; I think your presence was announced as efficiently as it would have been through a megaphone." Gaaaaaaaasp. "And besides that, if I was your enemy, do you think I would have pulled your," gaaaaaaasp, "fucking ass from an electrical tower and waited for you to wake up only to kill you?" . "I thought that stuff was only in cheesy horror flicks..."

He fell onto the couch; I realized for the first time that he must have been drained from the electrical encounter he'd had earlier, and he'd been running on emergency alarm hormones to keep him from collapsing on the floor while choking me.

"I hate fucking France," he muttered. It probably wasn't meant for my ears to catch, but my ears caught it anyway.

"It's your lucky day, Sunshine; you're in Texas, not France."

"Texas."

"Yeah. Texas. The state that looks like a huge thumb."

"Just shut the fuck up."

"You shut the fuck up."

"You shut the fuck up first."

"Sorry, honey buns, I didn't realize you owned the place. Actually, I didn't realize that you rescued me from death by electricity."

"If you're expecting a thank you, you can go jack off."

"Oh, I'm fine without gratitude. I mean, who the hell likes gratitude after someone risks their own neck for someone else's? Yeah, no gratitude's fine, it's cool, it's perfect."

"Shutdefuckuppp," he groaned from the couch where he was now trying to ignore me with his arm thrown over his eyes.

"I'm sorry. I forgot your name." I was back to being in a good mood; no one was throttling me, and I was enjoying annoying the shit out of him for the moment. A little light-hearted revenge for choking me, I guess you could say.

"Fuck off."

"Hello, Fuck Off. Nice to meet you."

The only response I got was the Bird.

Perfect.

Wonderful first impressions; I'd left the impression of my fist on his face, and he'd probably left bruises on my neck from his passionate choking of me. You could say that we had hit it off from first meeting.

Oh, by the way; if you haven't figured it out by now or connected the dots or some shit like that, my name's Andy, I'm a Jumper, and people want to kill me for it. If you have any other questions, you can make an appointment with my secretary.


	2. Burning

**A/N;** A _HUGE_ shout-out to everyone who made the beginning of this story so amazing for me and inspired me to write another chapter already; **SecretNerd, PushUpDasies, CP2girls, Black Wolf-Dog,** and** Emmy Matute.**

I wasn't expecting this kind of welcoming at all, and I have to say, it was phenomenal. So, here's another chapter (: Read & Review? :D

**Chapter 2**** - Burning**

If I had any hopes for the next morning, it was probably something along the lines of Fuck Off making me breakfast and bringing it to me while I lounged in bed, and not getting out of said bed until I felt like it, thank you very much.

I awoke to almost the exact opposite.

Gunshots rang out from the den, loud voices cutting through the early air, and - oh, dear God, did I smell smoke?

A yell of triumph invaded my ears, startling me to the point that I rolled over violently towards the sound - towards the sound and off the bed.

Fuck Off must have been very happy when the first sight he saw of me in the morning was me sitting on the den floor in the middle of my jumpscar, rubbing the back of my head, and moaning pitifully. Until I sniffed.

Yes, that was definitely smoke.

"What the hell is that-"

He didn't even say anything, he was so concentrated on playing X-Box. It's really quite terrific knowing that you mean so much to someone, they ignore you in the morning when it smells like they're burning down your apartment intentionally.

Shuffling to my feet, I sniffed the air again, just to make sure.

"Hey, Fuck Off - what _is_ that ungodly stench?"

"I'm a bad cook. Sue me."

"Get fucking Chinese," I snarked in reply as my feet padded to the kitchen in search of the source of the odor. The stove was clear, empty, good. The pantry looked as though it had been swept out to gather any extra crumbs that might have fallen on the floor, but then again, it always looked that way - except my popcorn was missing. My final packet of popcorn. Oh, holy shit, no he hadn't.

The microwave produced the results; yes, in fact, he had.

He had stolen my popcorn and then burnt it to a crisp so that its own owner didn't recognize the charred remains - which I held up to his face in the middle of a shootdown.

"HEY - FUCK - WHY - FUCK." He threw down the controller in frustration, running a hand through his hair, and glaring up at me. "Why the hell did you do that? I was on a fucking spree."

"Yay, I have your attention now." I shook the bag a little; goodness, it looked as though the bag was going to melt into ashes and drift through my fingers onto the floor. "Does this look familiar?"

He glanced at it as he picked the controller back up off the floor.

"Uh. Yeah. Now can you get outta my bloody way?"

"Nah, I don't think so, I prefer it when you can't see the TV."

He pushed the popcorn out of his face so I stepped around the couch and stood in front of him, waiting for him to die again. The real pity was that he hadn't even started yet, so it took a few seconds for him to be shot down.

He threw up his hands.

"You make it your life work, annoying me, don't you?" 

"Yes, quite. My life work. I mean, I fulfilled my dream, rescuing you from an electrical tower."

"Still harping on about that, aye?" He leaned around me to see the TV, clicking away at his controller happily enough before I stood in front of his line of vision. Boom. Dead.

"Yeah, because it's mildly important. I took you in, I gave you a couch for the night, I gave you somewhere to rest after I saved your life; I never said you could eat my last bag of popcorn."

"Look; you didn't save my fucking life." His eyes were suddenly flashing, his body rocketing up to standing position, putting his face within glaring distance of mine. "You pulled me out of a tower; I'm not going to go into a fucking field and pick you a handful of daisies as thanks."

"I would throw them in the trash if you did; I'm allergic to daisies."

"Roses, pansies, a cow - I don't give a fuck what I'm supposed to go into a field and get a handful of for you, because I'm not gonna do it! You're annoying."

"Thanks." I smiled happily. "Coming from you, that's a compliment."

"Yeah? Well, it must be the only compliment you've ever gotten in your entire life."

"At least I don't have a face like yours."

If it was possible, his face looked even worse than it had yesterday; the bruises were darker and more pronounced, the scabs now fully formed, and if the swelling had decreased, the difference was invisible. However, at that point, I would not have liked to have his face at any time of his life.

"Would you like me to make yours look like mine?" He held up a single fist. "I could do it, if you like."

"Ooh, threats; I'm so scared." My eyes widened mockingly, and I took a 'scared' step backwards, raising my hands up in 'surrendur.' "Don't kill me, please, I beg of you, don't _kill_ me!"

His jaw clenched, his muscles flexing in his cheek, and he took a step forward. A single step to close the gap between us, until we were staring each other face-to-face for the second time in five minutes.

Staring.

He was the one to break it off as well, backing away and turning around to go back to his comfortable little couch. Well, technically, it was my couch, but details didn't exactly matter at this point.

"Why are you here?" I finally asked him, breaking the deadly quiet before he could reach the comfort of my sofa. "Why are you still here?"

"I have nowhere else to go." It wasn't a plea, it wasn't shameful, it wasn't him saying that he needed help, because he didn't; if he needed a place, he could go out and find one without any trouble to him.

It wasn't even an inquiry if he could stay or if he had to go; it was a fact, and it was one that he assumed I was okay with.

"So? Live on the streets, start betting; who knows, maybe you'll get lucky, win the lottery."

"The only way we'd ever get lucky is if Justin Bieber heard himself sing and died of shame." He retorted, sitting down and picking the controller back up.

In thirty seconds, I had Baby blasting over loudspeakers I had hooked up to my laptop.

"Hey," I yelled over the loud noise that had a lot of fangirls, "you wanna get groceries?"

"Why the fuck would I want to do that?" He retorted, in the middle of thrashing around, trying to find tissues to stuff in his ears.

"Oh, you know; if you're going to stick around, you might as well make yourself entertaining."

There were so many pranks you could pull off in a grocery store.

**...**

That's how I found myself walking down the aisle of Wal-Mart in Paris, Texas, towing behind me a very attractively bruised jerk dressed in the most torn up leather jacket I had ever seen. He also happened to be complaining half of the time about how annoying I was.

"Oh, piss off," I told him in a phony old-time British accent, "if you don't enjoy my presence, you can always move out. God knows I won't stop you."

That was approximately five minutes before it happened; all that anyone knew was that two men in cliche black trenchcoats decided to show up in the same food aisle as Fuck Off.

In later times, when he described the scene to me, I had been pissy and gone off to look at the toys - which was untrue, I was looking at water guns because they were colorful - and he was innocently looking at canned fruit - which I believe is highly unlikely, because nothing he is consists of innocence - when suddenly these big, hulking men came to the head of the aisle and he, being the all-observant and omnipotent one, immediately noticed them.

And he, ever the smart one, put the canned fruits back on the shelf, and innocently began walking away, in my direction.

That was the somewhat-official start of it all; the grand beginning, the amazing first step, the checkered line of the racetrack that you cross over to begin the race.

But I didn't know that. All I knew is that I was looking down the barrel of a water gun, subconsciously shoveling the cart to and from me with my foot, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a deliciously accented voice whispers to me; "Paladins."


	3. Fighting Questions

**A/N;** A huge thank-you to the fabulous; **Emmy Matute, Black Wolf-Dog, envyfangirl, CP2girls, Voler Libre,** and** LuLeo.** Smiley faces and hearts to you all :D that being said, next chapter having been inspired by the love I have received (and, just like the last chapter, you guys blew me away) here it is. Read & Review? :D

**Chapter 3**** - Fighting Questions**

_The best place to be_

_Is in the midst of your enemy_

-Who gives a shit?

I was the walking bait and he was the trap. I was the big-mouthed genius with bright ideas and he was the one who looked at me for a moment and then agreed because I had just volunteered myself for danger - and damn, he probably wanted to watch this because I might die.

Did I forget to mention that I had gotten myself into this?

Me and my bright ideas.

Thanks to those bright ideas, I found myself walking out of the store; the shopping cart had been abandoned to the side of the store, heaping full of groceries, and all I could do was pretend to glance furtively over my shoulder at the two paladins following me.

This was a problem.

Suddenly, I found myself wishing that Griffin wouldn't come through and I would be able to fight these two handsome idiots myself; there was nothing I hated more than someone following me.

And it was all my idea.

_"I could lead them around the back," I had suggested helpfully, "you be waiting there with all of your mad choking skillz."_

_He had looked at me for a moment before he decided I was serious, and started nodding._

_"Just don't fuck it up."_

_"Just don't get caught in a fucking electrical tower."_

_He had given me a final look - that had probably had something to do with telling me to piss off - before jumping._

Of course, I was assuming on good faith that he actually _had_ jumped to the area behind the store, as agreed on, but Fuck Off didn't seem to be the kind of guy who missed out on a fight. On _any_ fight.

And right then, I was almost to the back of the store, with no signs of Fuck Off - unless a lot of bird dung on the ground is a sign of his presence, which would make some perverse kind of sense.

Finally, I rounded the corner of the wall, and I was home free. Except now, I wanted to fight. My blood pressure was rising, my blood was pumping through my veins, and my hands were balling up into fists that I couldn't seem to control.

So when the paladins rounded the corner, they were hit by two bodies traveling through the air instead of one.

The fight was over in less than a minute.

"You're a Jumper?" He asked as soon as the two paladins were both on the ground, conveniently lying side by side.

"You can think?" I retorted in the same tone as he had used; disbelief.

"Fuck you." He bent down to grab the paladins, making as though to drag their bodies away and hide them from sight and humanity.

"Yeah, you wish you could."

He jumped before he could say anything brilliantly biting back; when I followed him through his jumpscar, I found myself in my empty apartment - empty except for one dead man's body, that is. My foot found its way forcefully into his side, and as I walked away from the corpse, I muttered to myself; "Damn you, dumb paladin. You kept me from my toaster strudels."

They were still in the cart. Oh, dear, sweet loves -

Suddenly, a very wet Griffin was back, happily drenching an entire room of my formerly peaceful apartment in water. Salt water, judging by the beachy smell my now-wet den had suddenly obtained.

"Did you take the nice man snorkeling?" I asked as he swaggered over to the other body; his shoes went _squelch. Squelch. Squelch, _in time with the pattern of his walking.

"Why, would you like to go?" He was gone again before I could open my mouth; not that I would have. I was the epitome of innocence, why would I ever open my mouth to retort to that offer of death at the hands of an insane - if hot-accented - male.

Despite my innocence, I found myself opening my mouth as soon as he was back - this time without the waterfall accompanying him - and saying; "I'm too beautiful to die, Mommy."

He gave a derisive snort; "In your dreams."

"No, not really; in my dreams, you die."

He flopped onto the couch, immediately leaving a large - and spreading - watermark on the furniture. It was beyond my control to care what the fuck he did to my couch. It would probably be burned when he left, because he'd touched it so much. Horror to the thought of touching him; God knew what diseases he carried. Probably rabies, as well.

"In my dreams, you shut up," he retorted to my musings of daydreams I had entertained in the past twenty-four hours.

"It seems that my dream is the only possible one."

"Shut the fuck up."

"Get the fuck out."

Since he didn't reply, I safely assumed that he wasn't listening and therefore, he wasn't going to, as I so kindly put it, 'get the fuck out.'

"You know, Fuck Off, I had a perfectly nice life before you came along; inconspicuous. The paladins haven't caught up to me, and they didn't even know what the hell I looked like in the first place. If one of them saw me, he didn't escape, didn't even have time to phone in a description."

"Your point?"

"Patience is a virtue. Anyway; today, in the store-"

"Oh, don't tell me; Barbie's getting a pansy attack, freaking out about the violence and the blood and OH, NO!" His voice turned shrill and annoying. "Please, please, save me, Griffin!" 

"Your name's Griffin?"

"Yeah. What the bloody hell is it to you?"

"I preferred Fuck Off... I think it suited you better."

"Fuck off."

"See?" I sighed, remembering where I had been in my musings of my past life; I continued on with the thought that had struck me as soon as he had plopped onto that couch. "Back to the point; today, in the store, they followed me out."

"And?"

"Griffin, they didn't want just you; they wanted me, too, or else they never would have followed me. They would have been looking for you and only for you."

Although I hadn't thought of it when I had suggested the idea originally, it was now obvious; the paladins didn't even know who the fuck I was before I met up with Fuck Off- I mean, Griffin.

"Maybe they saw us together, earlier in the store." But now his ears were perking up and his eyes were sharper; he knew this made sense, as much as I did. He already knew that I was right.

"No; we would have noticed."

There was silence as we mused over these newly discovered facts.

"So they were after the both of us." He concluded.

I decided that I also wanted to state the obvious and opened my brilliant mouth to think aloud; "The question is; why?"


	4. Fish in Metal Bowls

**A/N;** To my favorite people in the world;** Slyly, Black Wolf-Dog, Emmy Matute, Voler Libre, DarkFireAngel00, CP2girls, **and **blockheadwriter**, I wasn't even expecting to continue past the first chapter, and yet you guys inspired me to and you keep inspiring me to, chapter after chapter. You are almost too amazing!

Read & Review? (:

**Chapter 4 - ****Fish in Metal Bowls**

It had been a few days since the incident with the paladins and, needless to say, things hadn't really changed. Griffin still hadn't moved out, the apartment still kept smelling of various dangerous and alarming odors, and I still had no idea why the paladins were after me.

You could also say that Griffin was not only still present and glued to the Xbox, but he was also still an asshole.

"You got anything that could hold this piece of shit together?" He asked, holding up a wooden spatula that had split cleanly in half. "I wanted to make pasta."

"You broke my only fucking spatula?" 

"It wasn't my fucking fault!" 

"And now you want to burn my apartment down? What is this, vengeance shit?"

"You're fucking insulting." 

"Ditto."

"So, do you have anything?"

I took another look at the spatula in his hand before he raised his eyebrows, waiting 'patiently' for the answer. If he managed to fix the spatula, he would probably end up making burned noodles, and if he did, I knew beyond a shout of doubt that the apartment complex would end up in flames.

"Nope."

He practically stomped out of sight, the spatula clattering into the kitchen sink before he reemerged and flopped onto the couch, turning on the Xbox with his toe.

_Oooh, he's __so_ _fucking talented, he can press a button with his toe!_ My brain snarked.

**...**

"Nooo, fuck, no, you're horrible at this!" I moaned in agony at his lack of winningness in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

"Maybe I would be better if you would shut up," he replied through gritted teeth, his jaw clenched in an effort to keep from biting my ear off.

"No, no, I don't think so," I said, standing to my feet and beginning to pace back and forth in front of the TV, contemplating the thought of Griffin being better at killing Nazi zombies. "See, a real man could play with a chorus line standing behind him. But you," I stopped walking, coming to stand in front of him so I could bend down and lay my hands on his shoulders in acknowledgement of his frustration at sucking, "you only have _me_ to deal with."

"Yeah," he muttered, "and I'd rather have the fucking chorus line."

"Jerk." I pouted. "That was uncalled-for."

"I just died." He told me complacently, leaning back into the couch. "And it's all your fault."

"You've been dying for the past three hours and fourteen minutes. Suddenly, it's my fault?"

His jaw clenched almost sporadically and, without visible warning, he surged up from the couch, scooped me up bridal style, and I felt the familiar electric surge in the air; then I found myself in the middle of a Goodwill, sprawled on the floor.

"Go shopping or something," he growled. "Just fuck off while you're doing it."

"I love you too, honey baby," I retorted, picking myself up from the cold floor and dusting off my hands onto my pocketless shorts. He stared at me for a moment before jerking his arm around the back of my head and cleanly yanking out my ponytail holder, leaving my scalp feeling abused and my hairpins still securing my bangs back out of my face.

"Spatula," he said, holding up the hairband he had just taken from me and winking; then he was gone.

Huffing as I got up from where he had dumped me, I almost jumped back to the apartment - then I realized that I _felt_ like shopping. And besides, if he ever asked me where I had been the entire day - highly unlikely, because he had such a pissy personality - I could always say that I had been in Paris. Who knew, he might just think that I was talking about Texas and not France.

So it was with cheerful thoughts of clothes, shoes, scarves, jewelry, and purses - but mainly shoes - that I slid the hairpins out of my hair so that my bangs were once again in my face, slipped them into the hair at the back of my neck so they were concealed, and I set off to find shops in Paris.

**...**

All was good and well two hours later. My shopping bags were in my hands and I was strolling along the sidewalk of an outdoor strip mall in Paris. I had noticed a couple of bozos who seemed to be following me, and they were wearing trench coats, but then again, it was Paris; everyone was wearing trench coats. Plus, they had no 'briefcases' that looked to be containing electrical thingummys, so I figured it was fine and shit.

That was before a sting entered the back of my neck, before dots appeared in the middle of my sight, and before my world turned black.

**...**

I awoke to find myself on a hard surface, its only warmth the heat that my body emanated. I seemed to be enclosed in a metal cell, bars across the doorway in the classic jail-cell scenario. Standing to my feet, I shuffled blearily over to the bars, peeking out at the world with all the enthusiasm of a rubber band, grasping at the metal lines in front of me only to realize that there were restraints encasing my wrists.

One finger poked at the handcuffs curiously. It seemed to be made of rubber, but I knew that was only a casing, since they weren't exactly stretchy handcuffs. No one else could have caught me except for paladins and paladins knew that simple restraints would not keep a Jumper captive. Either the facility - since I was assuming that was what it was - was surrounded by electrical systems, or the handcuffs were rigged.

I hoped for my sake that it was the second one.

"You're smarter." A voice said, and I looked up from my perusal of the handcuffs to find a cell across from mine; in this cell, there was a man.

"What?"

"You didn't try jumping."

"Yes, well, most of the Jumpers I know are idiots who don't bother enhancing their brain cells because they have their special talent of robbing banks. Are you an idiot?"

"I'm Thomas McDuggan." He smiled. Scottish.

He probably thought I owed him an introduction back, but I felt like disappointing someone, so he was screwed.

"What is this place?"

"You're so smart, why don't you figure it out?"

"Jackass," I retorted, but my brain wheels were already spinning and the cogs were already turning. "A Jumper experimentation camp?" I guessed after a few minutes of staring intently at the floor.

A single eyebrow rose. Oh, Geezus, he thought he was suave.

"Very good. How'd you figure it out?"

"Well, you knew I was a Jumper, and you mentioned other Jumpers. The only people who would ever imprison Jumpers in jail cells are paladins, and they usually kill Jumpers. The only reason they would ever keep us alive is that they are experimenting on us. But why? If I'm right and it _is_ a Jumper experimentation camp, what the hell are the paladins experimenting on us for?"

"You figured it out this far, I suppose I can tell you the rest-"

"Very gracious of you, I _must_ say," I interrupted.

"The paladins want what we have; they're experimenting on us to find a way to somehow either harvest or steal our powers."

Bitches get jealous of my swag, what can I say?

"I thought Roland was going to kill all the Jumpers and make the world a happy place without any mysterious and unimaginative bank robberies."

"Roland isn't in control anymore."

"What the fuck?" 

"He's missing."

_Well, stingy with the facts, aren't we? Men. They're all alike._ I started to pick at my handcuffs curiously, trying to find if there was a lock underneath the rubber - which would make sense.

"Who did it?"

He leaned forward conspirationally - or, at least, as far as he _could_ lean forward, what with the bars in his face and whatnot.

"I've heard rumors that this kid Jumper named David Rice did it, but that was a rumor. I also heard one concerning Griffin O'Conner - and just between, you and me, I'm far more likely to believe that one."

Geezus, how many Jumpers named Griffin _were_ there?

"Who?"

"You've never heard of Griffin O'Conner?"

"Stop gaping at me, man; I've never heard of him, get the fuck over it. I was more concentrated on killing paladins than listening to stories about kids with weird names."

"He's more than just a kid," sputtered my cell neighbor. "This particular 'kid' is one of the most infamous paladin killers ever. After he gets done with them, they're never seen again."

I abruptly remembered the salty smell that was still lingering in my den.

"And there's this other kid, right? Name of Andy DiMotti; brilliant killer. Brilliant. Efficient, deady as hell. But there's a realy mystery around him; no one knows what he looks like."

"Oh, really." I raised an eyebrow, amused now. "And why's that?"

"No one's ever seen him; if they do, they die."

So did that mean he was going to die?

And why did everyone always assume that _just_ because the nickname was masculine, the person with the nickname _had_ to be masculine as well?

Fuckers.

"So if these scientist paladins are so smart, why didn't they give us orange jumpsuits?" Thomas stared at me blankly. I stared right back, expecting a laugh. "Get it? _Jump_ suits?"

"Oh. Hahaha... ha... ha..." He still didn't get it.

"Seriously, do they inspect us before they put us in new clothes, comb through our hair and shit-" I trailed off for a second, having a sudden flashback of my hair being fiercely jerked as it lost its' hairband to the boy who had taken it.

Thomas, however, thought I was done talking and answered the unfinished question; "I don't know."

Bloody fucking helpful.

There was a clanging of doors and footsteps echoed down the hallway. A tray of something that was supposed to be food was slid beneath the my door by a male guard in a navy blue uniform. He was pushing a cart of trays heaping with slop; he picked another off the rolling implement and shoved it under Thomas' metal blockage of bars.

"Thank you," I called to the guard, who stopped in incredulity to stare at me with an expression that you might have expected to see when someone who didn't believe the world could end realized that the ozone layer was disappearing and there was global warming taking place.

I batted my eyelashes.

"You-you're welcome." He stuttered before pushing the cart onwards in a confused state.

Thomas was staring at me, I found, when I chanced to look up from eating my slop; by the looks of it, he had been for the past five minutes.

"What?" I asked innocently.

"He's one of them!" He sputtered indignantly.

"I fail to see your point." Did he not know what I was doing? It was the timeless girl-flirts-with-male-guard-and-gets-him-to-trust-her trick.

He apparently hasn't heard of it, considering the fact that he is now gaping at me like a fish.

Fucking brilliant.

I needed to think and I couldn't do it with him staring at me.

I went to lie on the slab of metal that I now called a bed, staring up at the unforgiving ceiling. And I thought.

I could try to escape now; I had the tools needed to break out of the handcuffs, and that meant I could jump away very quickly indeed.

Tom had said that there were other Jumpers imprisoned and the paladins were experimenting to use our powers. If the paladins acquired the skill to jump, we would stand no chance in the war. Jumping was our advantage, just as our general lack of brains and fear of electricity was their advantage.

We couldn't let them find a solvent for jumping powers.

Plus, all the Jumpers imprisoned here would be a huge asset to the war if they were freed; if we all worked together against the paladins, we stood a better chance, and that meant...

How would they be freed? The best time to do it would be when I was already inside, but there was the matter of the doors and the handcuffs. There were locks on the handcuffs, but they were underneath the rubber encasing, which was nearly impossible to get off in a short time, and definitely impossible to get off enmasse.

The point was that there was no way to unlock everyone's handcuffs so they could jump away simultaneously. So... how?

**...**

The sky was dark, the moon had risen, the sun had sunken below the evening tide, skyline, and then finally, the horizon.

And she wasn't back yet.

Perhaps she had felt like getting a drink and let herself be picked up at a pub or something.

It was Tuesday night. She didn't seem like the type who went to pubs on Tuesdays.

So it wasn't the pub. Perhaps she played poker. Perhaps she'd gone to Vegas, gotten on a roll, and lost track of time.

No. She had a perfect internal clock, judging by how she had rattled off the answer to how long she had been annoying him into dying. There wasn't a clock in the entire apartment and yet she knew the exact answer.

It wasn't Vegas.

Perhaps she had gotten attacked.

She could fight, he reasoned. She could fight.

Suddenly, there was a feeling in the pit of his stomach; something sour, like curdled milk with mold floating on the surface.

The sky was dark and she wasn't back yet.


	5. Days in Handcuffs

**A/N;** The biggest dedication-of-this-chapter in the world goes out to the fabulous; **DarkFireAngel00, Slyly, Black Wolf-Dog, HeadbangGirl, Violet Summers194, Voler Libre, Emmy Matute, ,** and** BritanyJean.** You guys are fantastic! And a special shout-out to **HeadbangGirl** for being amazing and filling my inbox with her awesomeness.

This is just a filler. I wish I could give more, but there had to be emphasis on this part and I couldn't make it emphatic while being distracted by the gorgeousness that is Griffin when he has healed. Sadness.

But tide me over until then and inspire me to no end, Read & Review? :)

**Chapter 5**** - Days in Handcuffs**

There isn't much that changes about a jail cell. The bed stays uncomfortable no matter how many times you sleep on it, bars still cover the only - normal - exit route, and the only person you can really flirt with is a guard who stares at you because you're the only nice prisoner that he delivers food to.

And the food wasn't even _good_.

As horrible as the slop was, I had decided to stay; idiocy and all that, you know. I hid my hairpins away safely in a crack in the stone wall, all while I investigated the handcuffs and craned my ears for anything about the place that I could pick up.

The guards changed every two hours in the early morning to late evening and every three hours between midnight and six A.M. The alarm system wasn't much of anything; a few sensitives were in the area, to try and see if anybody would jump, but that was only when new kids came in. And they did come in, one every three to five days or so.

There weren't electrical currents in the walls; the paladins were completely relying on the handcuffs to keep us securely in our cells. The doors were electronically triggered, but that wasn't any big deal. If one could jump, why would one need doors?

It was day sixteen when I finally devised a way to slip the rubber encasing on and off my handcuffs; I had finally worn away a strip so it slipped off and then on again. The lock that had been hiding underneath was one of the simplest I had ever seen. Easy.

What happened between day one and day sixteen wasn't quite so simple.

**...**

**Day Twelve;**

Three guards came marching down the hallway. It wasn't all that unusual; every other day, they would collect a Jumper to experiment on and then drop them back in their cell at the guard change, which was usually maybe an hour later.

This time, however, they stopped at my cell; the door's bars slid upwards with a hiss; I stood up before they could lay their gorilla hands on me.

"That's okay, boys," I said, "I'm a big girl, I don't need a stroller. Thanks for the consideration, though."

My smartassness didn't stop them from shoving me through the doorway or down the hallway, at the end of which there was a fork; the passage on the left sloped upwards, the passage on the right spiraled downwards. It was down, down, down we went, all while they were pushing me, pushing, pushing.

I could barely contain myself. There were paladins and I wasn't killing them; that was enough to set me on edge, let alone the fact that I was letting them fucking lay their filthy paladin hands on me - and they put their ape appendages where they pleased - and they weren't dead yet.

It was enough to make a girl go insane.

When we finally arrived at the sight where I was to be shackled and knifed for heresy or some such bullshit, I was about ready to find a noose and hang someone. Or, rather, three someones who all happened to be in a navy blue uniform.

The entire thing was unimaginative, I realized as I looked around. We were in some sort of a dome, so there was the ever-present circular metal ceiling. In the middle of the room, there, standing proudly on a platform, was a metal contraption, with straps for arms and legs and a very hard-looking pillow for my head.

How considerate.

It looked as though there were doors to close around whoever was inside; to keep them contained.

Definitely Three Seasons-worthy.

Without further ado, the three guards strapped me in, all while I was looking around, trying to find someone who looked like a sinister doctor, reading a clipboard and wearing the proverbial white doctor's lab coat on. I found two lab coats and one clipboard with a lab coat, so I figured he must be in charge of the 'experiments,' if that's what they were calling intentionally causing Jumpers hurt while trying to harness their powers.

I wasn't an idiot. I had seen the way that the Jumpers who returned had to be dragged down the hallway; they were lifeless, worthless, helpless.

You could call it any name you want, but it was still idiotic and it was still torture.

They didn't talk to me, which was a relief. They just whispered amongst themselves while sending me glances of suspicion, and then the doors began to close on me, and I was alone with myself for one split second, lying there, in the stomach of the beast itself.

And then the pain started and I was no longer alone, because Pain is a horrible companion. Mind-numbing, agonizing, torturous pain from the soles of my feet to the beginnings of my hair molecules, and I could do nothing. I could think nothing. I could feel nothing but pain.

I was unconscious when they dragged me back; I must have been, because I don't remember going back. I only remember waking up and thinking that I had to get out and I had to take every one of my fellow Jumpers with me.

**...**

**Day Sixteen;**

The guards were changing. I could hear their hands trading keys for freedom. Sliding one of the hairpins out of the wall and concealing it in my hand, I closed my eyes and waited; the footsteps were coming, coming, coming closer and closer. They stopped in front of my bars; a leering voice spoke through my pretense of rest, sneering; "Aren't you up for a good time?"

_No, _I thought to myself;_ unless you look like someone who'd like to commit suicide. In that case, sure._ If he wanted to commit suicide, he would try and 'have a good time with' me. And I would kill him; suicide commited, he would be dead, no further comments required.

He probably didn't want to commit suicide; such a bloody shame. I stayed still. After a few seconds, the sounds of his echoing footsteps resumed. In less than two minutes, he was back at his post, even if those two minutes _did_ feel like an eternity.

The fucking rubber was off and the handcuffs were free. The hairpin went into the lock, jiggled around a bit, and the handcuffs popped free. I carefully lay them on my bed, out of sight; I would be back in less than two hours. I just had to get the meeting place arranged.

With the best jump I had probably ever executed after not jumping for over two weeks, I landed in my den on my butt, the smell of charcoal in my nose.

The sight that met my eyes had me freezing and staring in disbelief. He was looking at me, frozen, poised to launch himself onto me and throw a few punches. But he knew who I was. And he wasn't going to tackle me.

I didn't care at the moment.

My voice spoke, although speaking isn't really what you could call it; "Are you, like, God?"


	6. Interrogating Interrogations

**A/N;** Huuuuge shout-out to the marvelous** DarkAngel00, Black Wolf-Dog, 1womanpres, Emmy Matute, Peppy McGee, SecretNerd,** and** brookeburke.** :)

**Chapter 6**** - Interrogating Interrogations**

What the fuck was I _supposed_ to say in that situation? I had gotten so used to him being discoloured to the point of a purple face that I had almost _assumed_ that he had been fucking _born_ with bruises on his face and then he's sitting on my couch, completely healed, staring at me where I'm sitting on the floor and he looks like he gives the most amazing kiss in the history of the fucking _world_.

Of course I would say something along those lines.

Are you, like, God?

"Are you, like, insane?" He growled in return; and before you knew it, Smartass Andy was back, picking herself up off the ground and facing him with all the dignity that she had left from falling three feet through the air to land on her ass.

In case you were wondering, that meant I didn't have _any_ dignity left.

But it didn't really seem to matter all the same; he was too absorbed in launching himself off the couch to grab my shoulders and practically start shaking me back and forth.

"Are you fucking _stupid_?" He hissed. "You've been gone for two fucking _weeks_."

"Geezus, I missed you too." I blinked. "Just stop shaking me."

He only started shaking me even harder.

It fucking _hurt_.

"What the fuck were you thinking? Were you all like 'Oh! Let's have a little fucking party and-'"

"FUCK OFF!" I screamed at him, losing my patience and pushing my arms into his chest to shove him away just so he'd stop f_ucking shaking me_! "AND STOP SHAKING ME!"

"Oh, now you have amnesia," he snarked. "Or did you forget my name as well as the fact that you're supposed to come fucking _home_ at least every _week_!"

"No, actually; that time I meant that you really _should_ go fuck off." I brushed my sleeves off subconsciously, as though to get the impressions of his fingers pressing into my arms out of my skin, but there his memory stayed. "Look, when I tell you to do something, I'm not fucking around, okay? I told you to _stop shaking me_."

He stared at me for a single moment.

"Where the fuck have you been, anyway?"

"Interesting story, that."

And it was mildly hard remembering that story when he was staring at me and his mouth was slightly open in half annoyance, half because he was about to say something.

"So? You going to tell me?" He finally asked, raising his eyebrows as though he were asking why the fuck I was staring at him.

At least his hair didn't look like Einstein's anymore, either. Dear God. Holy _fuck. _His hair was the type you could run your hands through. And his lips were the type you could-

"Sure." I replied, heading towards the couch he had been sitting on. "I just wasn't sure if you wanted to hear it or not, you were so busy fucking staring at me."

Might as well turn the charging bull's horns against itself.

He didn't reply; maybe because he wasn't going to admit if he was or not - I honestly hadn't noticed if he was or not, I was so busy staring at _him_ - or maybe because he was too busy watching me intently because I was now cringing from the waves of pain that had crashed over me because I had flopped uncaringly onto the couch.

Before I could react, he was stepping closer, his arms were harshly turning around me so his face was practically implanted in my back, and his fingers were yanking my shirt up, although I couldn't help but notice that he was careful to keep it from touching my spine too closely.

He didn't make a sound but I knew what he was seeing. I had felt it with my fingertips after Day Twelve.

"Start talking."

I think it's safe to say he didn't like my explanation. Or at least, that's what I assumed, since he just sat there, staring at me.

"So you're telling me," he said slowly, still gazing at me with an unfathomable expression in his eyes, "that you were abducted by aliens and the marks on your back are where the spaceship grazed you when they were taking off and you had just escaped and you hadn't jumped away yet?"

Nod.

"Yep."

"What do you think I am, a fucking idiot?"

"Well, if we're being specific..."

"Why the fuck-" He was subconsciously reaching for my shoulders again, probably to resume his bout of shaking. Either that, or he was _really_ cold and he was reaching towards me for warmth, only to eventually shiver so hard that the tremors spread through his arms to my body as well. Which I doubted, because it doesn't make sense for something so hot to be so cold.

"Okay, okay! Shit, okay!" I exclaimed, shifting away from his outstretched hands nervously. "Paladins got me. Weren't carrying fucking briefcases and I was in Paris, France, where everyone wears fucking trench coats." My voice lowered into a grumble as I slid to my feet, hoping to keep the pressure off of my wounds. "How the fuck was I supposed to know who they were? The color of their little umbrellas?" He opened his mouth, but I interrupted him before he had even begun. "They took me to a sort of prison, locked me up and shit. They're experimenting on Jumpers. I was knocked unconscious after the electricity bit, but my guess is that they used a whip on me to see if I would unconsciously try and jump if I was in pain, even if I was knocked out."

"Experimenting-"

"Yeah, experimenting. You know, guinea pigs? They want our abilities."

By the looks of it, he had been up to more than just sitting around while I was gone. While the apartment _did_ smell terribly of burnt food, it wasn't half as rancid as it could have been. He had been out.

If Tom McDuggan was to be trusted and an infamous paladin killer named Griffin O'Conner really _was_ out there, what were the chances that he was right in front of me, currently falling onto my couch?

"What happened to Roland?"


	7. Where In The World

**A/N;** __ shout-out to the phenomenal **Black Wolf-Dog, DarkFireAngel00, HeadbangGirl, Slyly, Emmy Matute, **and **speckleification**. Cheers! You guys are the bestestest ever. :)

It's going to pick up soon, I pinky promise. There's really no way to seperate anywhere further down the line than the end of this chapter, so I apologize for it being so short. :( But make my week, Read & Review all the same? :)

**Chapter 7**** - Where In The World Is...**

His sharp eyes glanced up at me from where he was now settling comfortably onto the couch; then a familiar look appeared on his face. I knew that expression. He had decided it would be amusing to with-hold information from me until he felt like talking.

"Who said I had anything to do with it?"

"This ridiculous Scoooottish bastard named Thomas McDuggan." For his personal entertainment, I even imitated the accent and all that shit. And what does he do in appreciation of my talent? He starts laughing.

"What the fuck are you trying to be, Indian?"

"Son of a bleacher," I growled irritably, deciding to try again. "I'm Scooooottish, dontcha kno'?"

It only served to make him laugh even harder.

"Now you sound Mexican!"

"Jerk. Stop avoiding the question." I had forgotten what question I asked him.

Oh. Right. What did he have to do with the disappearance of a scary black guy with white hair who was always clutching a knife. Interesting question, that.

"I'm actually appalled that you think I had something to do with that botch. Give me some fucking credit for creativity or something, Geezus! If it was me that did it, you'da known. There woulda been intestines strung over the floor or shit like that."

"That's such a pleasant image, Griffin. Really. That just made my week all sunshiney." I retorted. "But you know I ain't gonna stop asking you until you fucking tell me what the fuck fucking happened."

"Slow down, tiger." He winked. "You like that word, yes?"

"Just tell me already," I sighed in exasperation. I really wasn't in the mood. My back was aching and he was stretched out on the couch luxuriously, rubbing in my discomfort. It was like salt to the wound. Bastard, he did it intentionally. I could almost sue him in a court of law for what he was doing to my poor electrocuted thoughts.

"This kid, David Rice," he finally sighed. "Wanted to team up to get Roland or whatever, I gave up because he was fucking annoying-"

"Oh, you didn't do it because your poor tender heart was hurting on the inside for him?"

"-And he brings his girlfriend _and_ the paladins back to my lair, we kick them out, they nab the girl, I try to bomb the place, he kicks me in an electrical tower, and then goes off to be Prince fucking Charming."

"You musta left a marvelous impression on him, if he left you to fry up high in the sky." I began pacing subconciously. The carpet had worn out a long time ago in the first place. "So what happened to Roland?"

"What makes you think I know?"

"Oh, puleez, Griffin. What do you take me for, an idiot?"

"If we're being specific-"

"Jerk." I was still pacing, wondering in the back of my mind that if I didn't happen to pace a lot when I was thinking about killing people, would the carpet still be worn out, or no? Hm. "But seriously? If you were talked into teaming up and going after Roland with a _rookie_, you had to have something out for Roland, yes? I'm not this kid, Davy Rabbits, or whoever you said he was. He was oblivious, I'm not. He was probably mentally retarded, since you hung out with him and he asked you to be on a team with him - I don't like hanging out with you and I _definitely_ am not asking you to be on a team with me, so I guess I'm not mentally retarded."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that you aren't."

"Have I ever told you that you are a douchebag?"

"That one's new."

"Oh, goody. DOUCHEBAG. Not anymore, it's not. The point is; Griffin, sweet, sweet, darling Griffin..." I got down on one knee, pulling an imaginary box out of my pocket and presenting it to him with a dimpled smile. "Will you fucking piss off and tell me what the fuck happened to Roland?" My teeth were gritted in that ridiculous sunshine smile.

"Davy boy did something to him. Jumped him somewhere."

"You went and interrogated him while I was gone, yes?" I raised an eyebrow as I got up off my knee and began pacing again. I could imagine Roland's neck being squeezed lovingly between my hands. I could practically _feel_ it. I had been thinking of it for the past few years, I should hope that I would be able to see it with such a vivid imagination.

"You've been spending your time stalking me, haven't you?"

"You wish, fucker." I kindly resisted the urge to give him the Bird, and instead stopped pacing and faced him, folding my arms across my chest and waiting expectantly. "So now comes the magical part of the story where you tell me where the fuck Roland is, just like Dylan Royce told you. Kay?"

"He jumped Roland to the Grand fucking Canyon."

"Are we thinking, like, in Georgia, with the Providence Canyon? Because I can do that." I suggested hopefully. By the look on his face, my hope was misplaced. "No?" He shook his head, looking up at me with the expression of You're-a-fucking-idiot. Can't win 'em all, right? "The Grand Canyon. The one with all the pretty colors, that's a mile deep and-"

"Yeah. That one. No need to describe it. I already know what that pile of shit looks like."

"Just making sure that your eyesight was okay. You do kind of resemble a bat, so I was just wondering..." He looked up at me. I smiled benevolently down at him. "Now, don't kill me. You can take a joke, right? Say yes. Nod. Do something. Just stop staring at me like you want to kill me. Hell, you can even burn my popcorn! Just don't make me shit my pants!" I started fake-sobbing. The next thing I know, I'm on my back on the floor, cringing in pain, belting out at the top of my lungs; "YOU SON OF A BITTTTTTTTTCH."

"Now, now, be nice." He chided, almost stepping on my face as he went to the kitchen. Probably looking for some more of my popcorn to burn.

"You're one to talk," I grumbled. "Now. If there happen to be some strange-looking people jumping in here, it's only because I'm setting up a headquarters for all the Jumpers so we can fight the war together. Kay? Now, if you can just direct them to where they can get their bedding-"

"No way, I am not doing that shit."

"I don't think you have a choice, cowboy." I winked at him one last time before happily jumping back into my prison cell, catching one last glimpse of his tousled hair and his burningly gorgeous blue eyes before I was faced once again with stone walls and the feeling of Oh-shit-I-left-that-shindig-too-quickly-and-now-I'm-stuck-in-a-prison-cell-again.

Great fucking _joy_.


	8. Staying & Stacy

**A/N;** A huge shout-out (and apology for not updating sooner) goes out to** DarkFireAngel00, HeadbangGirl, FelineWolf, **and **YumKiwiDelicious.**

This chapter is dedicated to **Black Wolf-Dog** because she's a meanbutt and called me a bitch for not updating. In a hilarious way, though. She's a nice person. Kind of. Just kidding. ;)

Gotta warn you, guys. I just got my eyes on what's going to happen. Or a general idea. So a little bit of warning; I'm actually going to be a bit more of a smartass and not so much a lunatic now. Jail sobers people and whatnot, you know. Or something like that.

Read & Review, make me the happiest girl in the world? :D

**Chapter 8 ****- Staying and Stacy**

Two days passed before I made my move, since I wanted to make sure that no one had caught onto my temporary escape. Those dumbass paladins were as clueless as ever, if it matters.

Either way, I figured that I should start with a seemingly random cell down the corridor, since if I put it too close to mine and just worked my way down, they'd figure _something_ out and it would probably have something to do with me. So I slipped the handcuffs off, cheerily jumped a cell that I had glimpsed when they were dragging me off to my 'experimentation session', and clapped a hand over the occupant's mouth before they could even notice I was standing in front of them.

It was a she, I realized as I stared down at 'them', trying my best to look intimidating. If they were intimidated, chances were that they would be more likely to cooperate because they'd be scared to say anything. Or, at least, I was hoping that this was true.

"Hey," I said, clearing my throat. Well, there went being intimidating. Hey? Shit, I needed to work on my intimidating-people skills. "I'm here to help, 'kay? I'm a fellow prisoner, but I figured out how to escape and now I'm helping everyone else. Kay? So, no screaming. _None_. Not _one little squeak._ Clear?"

She nodded as best as she could against my hand. I released her and she stared at me as though I were insane as I bent down and began to work on her pair of handcuffs.

"Who are you?"

"Oh. Did I forget to mention that? I am-" What if she was like Tom McDuggan and she decided that I was a miracle. If she was a paladin spy, sent to a jail cell to make sure that the inmates were behaving and not escaping, then I didn't want her to know my name. A name in a jail meant everything."I am Annoyingly Mysterious. Nice to meet you."

"You mean you're-"

"I mean that it doesn't matter who I am." I needed a nickname. Something to do with Annoyingly Mysterious, just to piss someone off. A. M. Am. Amy? "You can call me Amy."

She was still watching me warily as I resumed fiddling around with the blue rubber on her handcuffs. We would probably have to take them along with us, so that the paladins didn't figure out how we had managed to escape. Hell, they might think that we had disappeared into thin air and the handcuffs were no longer effective.

Of course, they might replace the handcuffs with something more... challenging.

It would be nice to actually be outsmarted for once.

"I'm Stacy," the girl whose handcuffs I was dealing with replied, although she did seem to be in a bit of a daze.

"Yeah, that's nice." Silence. Might as well brief her. "Okay, Stacy, here's the deal. I'm planning on starting a resistance force against the paladins. Now that they're trying to become Jumpers, the war will go downhill and it's going to go fast. So we all need to team up together and defeat them as a force. Does that make sense to you?"

She nodded. Well, it was a response.

I continued with the very persuasive argument of; "No matter how long you live, if you run now, paladins will chase you and we will never win the war. If you stand and fight now, we can defeat them and you can live in peace, knowing that you don't have to run anymore. Wouldn't you like that?"

"Yes," she said, sniffling. "I would like that."

Wait. Was she crying?

Almost. She had tears in her eyes and her chin was wobbling in an effort to keep her sorrow on the dear God. A _weeper_. Of all people to pick for my first rescue, I had picked a _weeper_.

At least she had practically agreed to joining the team. It was a start.

The rubber was broken through, finally, and I unlocked the lock fairly quickly.

"Okay, now, Stacy, here's the thing. Right now all I have as a headquarters is my apartment, so can I take you there?" She nodded once again, her cheeks slightly wet as a single tear rolled down her cheek. What the fuck was she crying about, anyway? The thought of being free? Surely not nostalgia at the thought of leaving her jail cell behind. It was a fucking prison! How can you miss your jail cell?

I had thought it was psychologically impossible for an inmate to miss their jail cell.

Either way, I found myself grabbing her hand in mine, since I knew that she wasn't going to be able to jump all by herself, what with her teary state and all that. One, two, three - and we were gone, leaving only a jump scar behind and crashing down onto a floor only an instant later to find ourselves in my apartment, rolling on my floor.

Fuck it all, I needed practice jumping long distances. I had gotten rusty already. Pathetic. Eighteen days and my smooth jumping skills disappear. Unbelievable. I missed my freedom.

Oh, fuck. Griffin.

"Oh, Thorn in my Aaaaaass?" I called into the kitchen. All was silent. From the corner of my eye, I spotted a fading jump scar and, looking back at Stacy, I quickly said "Stay here. I'll be back soon," and then I was into the jump scar, moments before it vanished from the air.

Car horns announced all was clear and good in New York. If there weren't car horns, I would have been worried. But I wasn't worried; I was too busy scanning the crowd for an obstinate Jumper who wore a worn black leather jacket and hunched as though he were trying to keep something secret and guarded inside his own body.

Ah. Found him.

"Griffy-poo!" I yelled. He didn't turn. Wanker. He was probably playing deaf just so I would have to run after him and tackle him in a bear hug.

Yes. Griffin _definitely_ wanted me to bear hug him. It was written across his face every single time he saw me.

So, instead of running in front of him and stopping him with a very dramatic exclamation of 'STOP!', I instead decided to jump in front of him and hold my arms out, yelling; "TADAAAAH," complete with a huge smile on my face. Suffice to say this was not the wisest thing I had ever done in my career of doing non-wise things.

The expression on his face was not exactly enthused.

"Heeeeey," I drawled before he could open his sarcastic mouth and say something that would make me stare at his beautiful mouth in a mixture of fascination with the way his lips formed the words and outrage that he would dare to say such a thing to me. "I just wanted to tell you really quickly that I need you to start looking for a place to set up a base - oh, fuck it all, never mind that, I'll do it - and this is the part you need to listen to, but I don't know how to tell you. Uhm. Oh, right; I'm setting up a base for Jumpers to fight against the paladins because they're such dumbasses and I'm tired of their stupidity. Basically, I'm going to be bringing a few prisoners over from our captivity and whatever - I'd like for you to, you know, hospitalize them or whatever."

I jumped away before he could say anything, back to my apartment, hoping against certainty that - nope, there was the footsteps behind me. He had followed me through my jumpscar. Damn it. Damn it all to hell.

"What the-"

I turned around and shot him a warning glance, gesturing over to where Stacy was looking rather emotional once again.

"I thought you were going to leave me here!" She cried, almost hysterical; I suddenly found that I held absolutely no respect for her. If she couldn't be alone for thirty seconds, it was a wonder she had survived in a jail cell. Maybe she had been in a daze and not realized that she was in handcuffs. Maybe she had been delusional and thought she was in her own sunshine-yellow bedroom. Not that I knew the color of her bedroom. She just seemed like the type to paint her walls sunshine yellow.

"No, no, I wasn't going to leave you here," I said, patting her on the back as she hiccupped in an effort to keep from crying. No one cared if she cried. She practically was already anyway. Might as well add wetness coming from her eyes into the bargain of shivering, dry-sobbing, collapsing onto a couch and forcing me to follow her in an attempt to soothe her... dear God, why had I picked this particular prisoner? "I was just meeting up with a... friend... and bringing him back here so he can keep you company."

Sniffle. "That was so," sniffle, "thoughtful of," sniffle, "you."

"I know, it was, it really, really was." In the middle of my rubbing her back and whatnot, I look over to find Griffin standing there, staring at the spectacle. Stacy lying on the couch, me sitting next to her and patting-slash-rubbing her back - I really couldn't blame him if he was wondering what the fuck was going on here.

I was wondering that myself.

"All right, Stacy, I'm just going to go talk to my... person... for a few minutes, but I'll be right back, and I'll be right in the other room. Right down the hall. Okay? Okay." I grabbed Griffin's arm and jumped before she could say anything. That seemed to be becoming a habit of mine, jumping before people could talk. It made me feel... powerful.

"I don't want to hear it. I mean, this is going to work. How can it not?" I began to pace up and down, forgetting that I was talking aloud. "Just because she's a little loose around the head doesn't mean that all the prisoners are like that. And we can train them, right? Just because they can't kick ass now doesn't mean they can't later on. Right? I mean, she's just one prisoner. There is no reason to be making false assumptions based on _one_ person. And we can train them. In combat. And-"

"Wait. Combat? _We_? You can do self-defense?"

"Yeah," I replied, stopping in my pacing and looking at him. "I take yoga."

"What does yoga have to do with self-defense?"

"Nothing. I just like saying it." My hands slid up to my hips subconsciously. "But yes, I can do self-defense. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean that I can't stop someone from raping me." I clicked my fingers in his face and swung my head like girls are supposed to do when they're making a point.

He started laughing.

The son of a grape started laughing!

"Slow down, tiger," he drawled. "And stop acting like a retarded Barbie."

"Oh, you know you like Barbies," I replied, instantly becoming flirty and shimmying up to him exaggeratedly, rubbing my shoulder against his in a Barbie-like fashion as I batted my eyelashes a little too much.

"You're annoying. Have I ever told you that? Fucking annoying."

"I love you too, Ken!" I warbled as he pushed away and headed for the door. Before he could make it, I grabbed onto the sleeve of his leather jacket, waiting for him to turn in irritation. I wasn't disappointed.

"What?" He asked with a bit of attitude. At least he wasn't shouting. That was an improvement. Slightly.

_Don't be gettin' that tone with __me__, boy. I will set you __straight__._

I wished I could.

"Call me Amy around the prisoners. All right? I didn't want them to know my actual name, in case I'm caught doing this. I don't want someone to have information about me. 'Kay?"

He stared at me.

Bugger.

"What the fuck." He shrugged.

Good. He didn't care.

Little did I know that his brain was already whirring with the data he had just received. I would hate him later, maybe. Perhaps. But he was too smart for his own good - and for mine.

I was also a little too smart for our goods, because I had just trapped him into saying he was staying for at least a little while, even though he hadn't exactly said _that_. That was how I interpreted it and that was how it was staying. Plus, he knew that if he left, I would be an annoying bitch and track him down to the ends of the world.


	9. A Pretty Picture

**A/N; **A great, huge shout out to **Black-Wolf Dog, DarkFireAngel00, HeadbangGirl, Georgie, littlebabydevon, Novella Vialli, mcgonagiggles, Allyaneedislove, Pumpkin Grin, TheLocketThief,** and **Sonny13**. I feel so awful for not having updated in so long. If there's anyone left alive and still reading this story, I am ecstatic, but I really do not expect anyone to be. ): I owe it to you guys to be better and more consistent. I'm sorry.

Leave a review if you think the chapter's worth it. (: If not, well – I guess you just won't leave one then, will you? (Bashing is accepted. It makes me laugh.) Oh. And Happy New Years, guys! (:

**Chapter 9 - A Pretty Picture**

It seemed to take the longest time to get Stacy calmed down. Either that, or her sniffling tears were a time machine and made time go slower than was necessary or normal.

Either way, it was way too long. I was nearly happy when I cast Griffin a final glance and give my farewells to Stacy in a chanting tone so she didn't get freaked out. Perhaps I was overdoing it - but I would rather be overdoing it than underdoing it and take another - salty, tear-laden - shower that day.

No, thank you.

I was actually rather happy to see the walls of my jail cell, to be able to clap my cuffs back on and relax on a stone cot, sighing in contentment. Yes. It was a happy occasion. No one crying, no one -

Wait. Was that sniffling?

In panic, I looked around to try and detect where it was coming from, to see if I would have to pay someone _else's_ back, or maybe to try and hide out of sight, shut my ears, and ignore the being in torment.

Oh. It was just a rat looking for food.

I suppose that you could say that things continued as normal, but that assumption would be mildly ludicrous, being as how being a Jumper and being stuck in a Paladin jail cell are both very abnormal things. However, for a world such as mine, the events that followed my short visit to Griffin, my abrupt rescue of Stacy, and my impromptu decision to form a fighting organization - well, events following _that_ could hardly be anything other than understandably ordinary.

It was almost sad how many people missed Stacy - and by the term 'many', I mean 'few' - but really, it was for the better. If the guards didn't notice, then it would take them longer to wise up to the fact that people were escaping. With my help, of course.

I didn't want to take Tom anytime soon, since I didn't want him to meet Griffin and start blubbering about what an honor it was to meet him and how kickass the girl who had rescued him was - and then start talking about identities and coincidental names.

Plus, knowing Griffin, he would probably think that Tom was Indian, get irritated, say something, and then insult the mighty Scottish pride.

Yeah. That would be a _really_ pretty picture.

Of course, while it may have been a 'pretty' picture, there was a larger picture that I was not able to view. A larger picture that I would have been worried about, had I been able to see it; a larger picture that made the 'pretty' picture insignificant in comparison.

…

"Go away," he growled.

"Why are you so mean to meeeeeeeeee?" Her whining voice piped up again.

"Why are you so annoyingggggg?" He retorted impatiently, shrugging off her clinging fingers and casting his eyes around for his jacket. Damn - where was -

"Stacy, where the fuck is my jacket?"

"Is that any way to talk to a lady?" She gasped.

"Listen,_ sugar plums_," he nearly spat, "if you actually _were_ a lady then that wouldn't be a problem now, would it?" He left her sputtering - wordless for once, hallelujah - in the middle of the room and went to go search for his precious scrap of leather. He finally found it next to the couch she had been sleeping on.

Ugh.

"I'm leaving for a few hours. I'll be back." Sadly, he added silently. Fuck it all. Why was he sticking around again? Oh, right. Andy had caught him by surprise and somehow made him agree to keep an eye on Stacy.

However, even the toughest babysitters need breaks.

…

Time dragged by slowly. It may have been the fact that I was stuck in a stone cell or it may have been that all I had to do was jiggle my handcuffs around and talk to the Scottish gossip across the hallway who loved to talk about infamous Jumpers who sounded rather familiar to me. Great. My idea of a great vacation.

"Tom, where do you get this information?" I asked one bright day - it might have been night, I really couldn't tell anymore - when he kept prattling on.

"I have my sources. Anything you want to know, I know."

"Oh, really?" Might as well suck his blood while he was offering his jugular. "What does - what's his face - Griffalicious O'Coffee look like?"

"...Griffin O'Connor?"

"...Maybe." I did rather like the name Griffalicious O'Coffee, though.

"Uh."

"Hey," I said with a triumphant smile, "you did say that you knew anything I wanted to know."

"Sandy brown hair," he finally said, "I saw a picture of him once, from the one time he got captured. A friend of mine hacked into one of the paladin databases, came across his file by accident. Ended up dying."

"Sandy hair?" I prodded. It was best to ignore the stories of friends that were already dead and gone. Unless you asked, of course. Which I hadn't.

"Yeah. Sandy hair - uh, blue eyes, pretty sure."

"Does he look like he has back pain? Or maybe constipated?"

Whether or not he had thought of me as definitely insane before I asked those two questions, Tom obviously did after I asked them.

"I'm getting some sleep. You're havering."

"I'm - what the fuck?"

He ignored me, turning to his beckoning stone cot. I could hear him sigh as he settled onto it.

"Hey, Tom?"

"What."

"What's the capital of Cuba?"

"Fuck you." I could hear him turning over, physically trying to shut the thought of me out, all while muttering something about idiots not knowing what havering meant.

Damn Scots.

But I wasn't the only one asking questions.

**...**

The days hunched past, slumping and dragging their feet. Finally, I decided that it was time for another escapade and prepared to set off on another daring rescue mission.

I waited for the opportune moment, pretending to be asleep and keeping my eyelids shut as the guard sauntered past, stopping to tickle his bat along my cage bars, eyeing me to make sure I wasn't responding. If I did move, he would have an excuse. But my limbs remained perfectly still and he was forced to move on. After all, if the cameras caught him standing at one door, staring at a prisoner, he could be blamed for consorting.

His footsteps faded away. I opened one eye cautiously even though there was no real need for such careful measures, sitting up and jimmying my handcuffs into giving away, walking over to one of the spots that I knew the camera could not see - the hole-in-the-wall latrine - and pretending to busy myself. Then I jumped, thanking the heavens that they only camera'd the important and dangerous prisoners. Even though that made things difficult for me, it also made things easy for everyone else's escape.

I landed precisely this time, conveniently right next to the latrine.

It was a guy this time. My lucky stars seemed to be working that day.

His mouth opened to yell, but I shot him a poisonous look, and he silenced himself. Oh, good. Someone who looked to have a bit of common sense this time. I pulled up my pants rather quickly, keeping an eye on the Mr. Prisoner until my pants were secure. My disguise was going to the latrine, and nobody went to the latrine for that long without pulling their pants down. Unless they were very irregular people.

"All right," I said. "I'm here to rescue you. All right? Are we good? No hysterics? We're safe?"

He stared at me like _I_ was the dumb one.

"I'm a male," he replied slowly, as though I were mentally struck and I needed to have things explained to me slowly.

Thanks, man. 'Preciate.

"Well, sorry, Mr. Masculinity!" I mumbled. "Better to be safe than sorry. All right. So - oh, shit, what's wrong?"

Tears were welling into his eyes.

"My mama used to say that! Better safe than sorry..." he trailed off, looking glumly at his fingers.

And here he had been saying that he was a male. Yeah, right. I'd believe that any day of the week.

"All right, then... Anyways. So. I'm going to break into your handcuffs, grab your hand, and we will jump into the merry distance. But you best let me jump, since I know where the fuck we're going to be going. All right? Good? We got it?"

"My mama-"

"Good, you got it." I gave him a glare to silence him while I approached him with the hairpin. "Now, don't move. And whatever you do, don't say a single word. This takes a lot of concentration." Not really. I just wanted him to shut the fuck up and not tell any sob stories. His silence would save me from having to punch him in the face to show him some people had it worse than he did."

The handcuffs were unlocked after only a few minutes. I snapped them off of his wrists, tucking them into my pocket, and grabbing his hand.

"Don't worry," I said quickly. "I always wash my hands."

He stared at me for a moment, not comprehending. I held up my other hand innocently. Considering the way I had arrived in his cell, I thought it might be a good thing for him to know. Apparently not, since he opened his mouth to speak.

"NNNEHNEHNEH. Did I give you permission to speak? No? Didn't think so."

With that, we jumped. Stacy was watching television - oh, how I had _missed_ her - and shit, I had forgotten to get the dude's name. My people skills were failing me. Well, what skills I cared enough to keep.

"So, uh, what's your name?" I asked, releasing my grip on his hand and sauntering over to the refrigerator, grabbing a beer and flopping my weary back into an easy chair that welcomed me with open arms.

He stared at me for a moment, then examined his liberated hand.

"Steve," he said slowly. "My name's Steve."

"Oh, hi. I'm... Amy. Nice to meet you." Not really. But at least the years had vanished. "Okay, so here's the deal, Steve; I was captured right along with everyone else, right? Have you been into the interrogation room?" I was speaking inbetween swigs of my glorious beverage. Aaaaah.

"Yes."

I finished the can of beer and set it to the side, leaning forward to speak. Down to business now.

"Well, then, you've probably figured out that the paladins are trying to steal our powers and harvest them so that they can become Jumpers as well. Yes?"

"Yeeeeeees..." His face said 'Nooooo...'

Shit. Another idiot.

"All right, then. The way I see it, we can't run anymore. If we do, we're going to be caught and we're all going to die. But if we can stop them before they discover our magical abilities and whatnot, then we can defeat them once and for all. And wouldn't it be so nice to not have to keep running? Just this once, Steve. My plan is to rescue everyone in the cells, train them, and then attack. What do you say?"

"Sure." I had the strangest feeling that he was only saying yes because he didn't want to admit that everything I had just said had gone straight over his head."Yeah. Sounds cool."

"Great. So for right now, we're just going to chill here until I'm able to rescue more recruits from the prison. Sound good?"

"Yeah."

Finally. Conversation over, recruit recruited. I stood up to get another beer, sauntering over to the fridge and peering in again. Oh, shit. I'd just had the last one. _Someone_ hadn't gone grocery shopping. Damn Griffin.

Then a body hit mine and suddenly, I was on the floor, pinned, with murderous blue eyes staring down into my own.

"Who the fuck are you?" He demanded.

Well. Wasn't this a pretty picture.


	10. Janitorial Closets

**A/N;** A huge shout-out to the amazing **NicoleReckless, VeryaTirananniel. Black Wolf-Dog, **and **Sonny13.**

Just a filler. Don't worry ;) more action and interaction coming up shortly. Mwahaha. Emotion time. However, I must say that I am rather impressed with myself and my improved updating time ;D Two weeks! Better, aye? I must beg for reviews and the inspiration they bring, however. They are dear to my heart, they are. Anyways. Read Below. ;D Hearts & Cheers & A Happy New Years!

**Chapter 10 ****- Janitorial Closets**

"Shit," I groaned. "Nice welcoming home party."

"Answer the fucking question; who the fuck-"

"Who the fuck am I - I get it, I get it." I tried to get up nicely, but he was holding me pinned to the very hard floor. "That's a brilliant question, really. I'm the jackass bitch whose apartment you're staying in." Suddenly, I threw all of my weight to one side, locking my knees and rolling him over in one swift motion. Now he was the one underneath. I smiled innocently. "Remember?"

I sat on top of him until his glare of distrust turned into a glare of discomfort. Apparently, straddling someone's stomach is not good for their breathing capacity. Who knew.

"Really, Griffin, I thought you were of higher intelligence than to ask such a question." I said as I climbed off of him and sauntered away casually, looking backwards and blinking innocently.

"And I thought you were of higher intelligence than to blink like a brainless, maimed rabbit." He retorted, his mouth setting firmly as he got his feet underneath him as well. If looks could kill.

"That makes no sense, O-Person-With-A Growling-Creature-For-A-Name. And oh. By the way. Why have you not gone shopping for groceries?"

"Uh. Because I'm not your bloody fucking maid?"

"Well, you _are_ staying here." I replied, giving him what I hoped appeared to be a rather dangerous glare.

"Yeah? Next thing I know, you'll be asking me to cook for little homeless children!"

"I thought you _were_ one..."

"Oh, you're so funny." He said, narrowing his eyes. "Really. Fucking hilarious. The point is - I'm not going fucking grocery shopping. You want food, you go get it yourself."

Suddenly, our delightful conversation was rudely interrupted by a very strange smacking sound. In unison, we looked over to see Stacy and Steve on the couch, trading spit rather vigorously.

Well. That was fast.

Griffin and I looked at each other for a moment.

"So. Grocery shopping?" He said.

**...**

The last time I had been grocery shopping with Griffin O'Connor, things hadn't turned out so well. Two paladins had tried to kill us and ended up snorkeling in some water, probably with some nice rabid sharks. Still, things could have turned out worse. I didn't know that they were going to this time. I didn't have any idea of what was going to happen.

"Oh, shit, no - we are _not_ getting that shit out of the ass beer."

"Keep your crude language to yourself, dear sir." I told him, primly glancing over to where a young boy with perfectly combed red hair stood, gaping at us. "We have an audience of very young ears."

"Ah, what the-"

"NEH!" I reprimanded him, wagging a finger at him in a rather ridiculous manner.

"I don't give a-"

"NEHNEH!"

I thought for a moment, turned around, and smiled at the young boy, bending down and whispering in his ear before he could run away.

"Really?" He asked.

"Yes," I replied, smiling graciously at him. "Now, don't you think your mommy's missing you?"

"She's right-" He turned to point, but his mother was gone. She had walked off while he had been staring at us in awe. He obligingly ran off and I continued on with my grocery shopping, innocently ignoring any and all complaints emanating from anyone wearing a beaten-up leather jacket.

It was only a few minutes later when we were attempting to talk the other into crunchy or plain peanut butter that I saw the little boy again. He was walking along beside his mother, but an old lady was approaching them from behind.

"Excuse me," the matronly figure said. "I think your little boy dropped this." She held out a five dollar bill.

What the fuck was that small a kid doing with five dollars? Spoilt. I had done him a favor.

"Oh, thank you so much! What do you say, Timmy?"

"FUCK YOU!" He shouted at the top of his lungs with a beaming smile on his face.

The expressions on his mother's face was priceless, but the old lady -

I doubled over, I was laughing so hard.

Then young Timmy, the treacherous son of a bag, pointed straight at me and his mother started running for me.

"OH, SHIT!" I grabbed the first part of Griffin that I could reach and start dragging him away, running for my life, still laughing. "Holy shit, holy shit!"

"WHAT THE FUCK-"

"Just run!" I darted a glance behind us, grinning like the devil. I probably shouldn't have told little Timmy that 'fuck you' meant 'thank you' and he had to shout it at the top of his lungs to show his true gratitude - but it could all be blamed on Griffin. In some way, shape, or form.

Finally, Griffin - ever the brilliant one - got tired of running and jumped us into a janitor closet that we had just passed. It was only then, in the tight darkness, that I realized the part of Griffin that I had grabbed was his hand and that I was still holding onto it. I released it like it was a poisonous snake, but the fact that we were still practically face-to-face in a janitor's closet wasn't to be ignored. All I could hear was the beating of my heart, the rushing of my blood, and his breathing coupling with mine. And I could smell his scent, unless someone had invented a bleaching cleaner that smelled like pine trees, leather, and a musky denseness that could only be immediately described as arousing.

"I know who you are." He whispered.

Of course he would choose a moment when I was having a mental relapse and envisioning his lips crashing to mine and the world numbing itself away -

"Huh?" I said in my eloquent words.

"I know who you are." He repeated, backing me up into the wall behind me. Yes, the wall had somehow been involved in my mental relapse as well...

"What, have you been absent for the last month of us fighting?" I retorted, fighting the urge to mentally relapse again. But damn - in the dark, when he was whispering -

"You know what I mean."

Unfortunately.

"So, tough shot, who am I?" I couldn't stay against the wall forever. If I did, I would go positively mad. My hands subconsciously reached down, grabbed his belt loops, and directed him backwards, following him closely. So this wasn't the greatest idea ever, even if it had us reversing roles. Now it was me seducing him in my mental relapse. That, of course, was much easier, since that situation did not involve me waiting for him to make a move. _That_ situation included me happily taking the reins into my own hands and not having to wait. In the dark. In a cleaning closet.

Why the _fuck_ did we _have_ to have this conversation when it was dark and our bodies were too close for great comfort?

Oh, shit. I had thought about fucking.

Not good.

I was jerked out of my daze by two very simple, straight-forward words.

"Andy Collins."


	11. Truth & Weakness

**A/N; **Well. I believe I am on a roll. Two weeks and an update again, albeit a short one. Apologies. But! I added Review Replies down at the bottom. In addition, I must give a huge shout-out to the marvelous **DarkFireAngel00, Black Wolf-Dog, **and **NicoleReckless.** And everyone who favorited and alerted as well. [I accidentally deleted all of my shout-out emails. Don't you just love Yahoo?]

But. Make my week, Read & Review? ;)

**Chapter 11 - Truth & Weakness**

My heart slowed. My fingers went numb. And it was a feeling I knew all too well.

It was a feeling that I associated with emotion. And emotion was a thing I did not enjoy. Particularly from myself. To have emotion was to be weak. To cry was well and good enough for lying. But weakness was not an option in the world of Jumpers. If you took the time to let the rivulets of tears run down your face, you would find yourself strung up by your heels, convulsing in pain as electric waves swept through your body and a knife specifically made for killing inserted itself in your stomach.

In my world, if you cried, you died.

I felt him reach towards me. Perhaps he had grown to know my hard ass well enough that he knew what I was about to do. Either way, there wasn't any way he could stop me.

One moment, I was face to face with him in a janitorial closet. The next, I was breathing in the salty air of Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

Perhaps it was not the smartest place to go, as emotions ran as deep there as the deepest ocean bed on the planet. But it helped. It reminded me in a single instant that I had already lost everything. And if it had already been lost, it was pointless to dig around in my head to remember it once more.

No, things were better left forgotten.

And yet things are not so easily left behind. Particularly jackasses who possess "special powers" and wear overly scuffed leather jackets. And get stuck in power lines.

"You know you aren't going to be able to run." He said from behind me. "Not from me."

"I am many things, Griffin, but the one thing I will never be is stupid."

"That doesn't mean you won't run." I felt his eyes scrutinizing my back. It was a rather irritating feeling; it almost felt like I had an unreachable itch crawling over my skin.

And perhaps he was getting to know me a little too well. Which was ironic, considering the fact that he had asked me only thirty minutes before who the fuck I was.

"I fail to see what your point is."

"Why did you lie to me?"

"Why would I not?" I retorted, suddenly recognizing the beginnings of irritation stirring up in my belly. "I have lied to every other person in my life. What the _hell_ makes you think that _you_ are _so _fucking special?"

"I'm not every other person."

As annoyed as I was becoming, I still absently noticed in a wandering sort of way that Griffin sounded like a normal person having a normal conversation when he was actually about to throttle you.

"How nice for you," I snarled, "but-"

I was about to say that I didn't trust him, just as I didn't trust every other person that was still alive on the planet. But then I realized that wasn't necessarily true. My relationship with him was the closest thing to trust that I had known in a very long time.

Ah, shit. I knew I hadn't liked him.

"I didn't know our tender relationship was based on sob stories and truth," I finally bluffed.

Suddenly, he was only a few inches away from my back and his heated breath was pooling on my neck. My skin prickled as though being stuck with minuscule needles and the various microscopic hairs on my body stood erect to attention as he spoke in my ear, his voice impounding itself through my ears and into my mind.

"You will understand one thing; I am many things as well." His fingers harshly dug into my arm. "I will never let anyone lie to me. Do you understand?"

My arm yanked itself out of his bruising grip and I finally whirled around to face him, anger clouding my vision.

"I just so hate to remind you, but since you seem incapable of remembering it by yourself, I am forced to say that I saved your life and I am letting you stay in my apartment. You are in no position to make demands. And I refuse to change for any person on this earth, regardless of whether I give a damn about them or not and you would do well to remember that also."

His bright blue eyes bored into mine, a fiery ice smoldering in their depths. I stared defiantly back at him, fists clenched at my sides, my heartbeat racing recklessly inside of my chest. If he wanted this, then this was what he was going to get.

"All I want," he finally said, his voice low, as though he were trying his absolute best to keep his temper in check, "is the truth."

The truth that would make me cry. The truth that had made me weak. If anything, I wanted to show that I was just as strong as he was, that I was just as capable, just as badass. I wanted him to see that I wasn't one to rely on tears. I wanted him to see I could depend upon myself and myself alone.

That I didn't cry. That I wasn't weak.

His eyes asked me if the truth was really so much to ask for. My response was the empty air around him; without warning, I escaped to a street far, far away where I could hide and he would not find me. I knew somehow that he would not come after me. He would not chase a girl twice. He simply didn't.

But I hid anyway, curling into a ball with my arms wrapped around my legs, my forehead resting on my knees.

No one was watching. And still, I did not cry.

**...**

**Review Replies & A/N;s**

**NicoleReckless;** Well, here's the next update! I hope it's to your liking. :) And I love giving shout-outs because I love hearing people's reactions to the chapters. :D

**Black Wolf-Dog;** Oh. Em. Gee. I am so sorry that I have not reviewed yours! I am so anxious to review it and yet I never have the time and I can't do it on my phone because it won't show the word count so therefore I can't begin to - *grovel* I beg your forgiveness. D; But I hope you liked this chapter... and I hope you don't give up hope on me... and I hope you forgive me... *grovel* I love you? *grovel*

**DarkFireAngel00;** In answer to your question, I wish they could bang already. ;D If I assured you that they will eventually, would you not give up hope? Haha.


	12. Wounds

**A/N; **It is too late to even think right now. I would have updated sooner, but for some strange reason, FF would not let me log on, so I am updating in the wee hours of the morning. Ah, devotion.

A great, huge thanks to everyone who Reviewed this past chapter. I loved the response that I got! You guys are amazing!

Shout-outs to;

**DarkFireAngel00 - **Where Griffin is grabbing, chasing, or holding, he remains gorgeous, aye? ;D But I do agree. He needs to let go of his pride. Bah. I promise, this will happen later. ;D

**Black Wolf-Dog - **I don't think you could call my life right now living. It's more like surviving off the licks of the land. Which makes no sense. But you know what I mean. xD There are many things that happen in janitor closets. And besides, what would happen if _you_ ended up in a janitor closet with Griffin? ;D I know I would be having the exact same responses lol. I'm sorry I didn't update as soon as I would like and I'm sorry I haven't reviewed yet. My mother and my brother are both killing me. Figuratively and literally. I have - and this is literal - no computer time whatsoever. But it shall happen! I promise you, as soon as I get a chance, it SHALL happen!

**HeadbangGirl - **Well, you're on the shoutout list now! ;) And of course I never pick the easy way out! That would just be - too easy. :D Make sure he finds her? Meh. More like - well. You'll get your Griffin, I guarantee you that haha. But I honestly don't think I could work in a tux in this one. Sorry ;(

**NeRd - **Thank you so much! You have no idea how happy hearing that makes me! I hope you like the chapters to come as well as you liked the last one. :)

**TheLocketThief - **Confession! Your review made my week. (Hearts!) Sorry about your broken arm, though :( that sounds like it sucks! And don't worry, you can be soppy all you like :) I love it when reviewers get soppy haha. I hope you keep enjoying! :)

**Chapter 12 - Wounds**

He waited for her to come back; waited until the sun went down, waited until the evening lapsed into the night. Then he locked himself in the untouched room that had once been her bedroom, and he tried his best to ignore the lovebirds that had taken over the couch.

**...**

I barely made it back in my time limit of two hours. But the footsteps of the guard were echoing down the hall -

For a heart-stopping moment, I thought that perhaps I had been caught, that I had grown careless, and that the lazy guard had found me out. But no - the echoing steps of the slimy beast were meandering and slow. I was still safe for the moment. But his jeering voice was coming closer and closer. With a single, quick movement, I slid the cuffs around my wrists and wrenched them closed, moving to my stone slab and lying down, closing my eyes.

"Well, hello, beautiful."

I did not have to open my eyes to see the leer on his lips, to feel the way his eyes skimmed over my body, to shiver in disgust.

He was nothing more than a bully who thought it was his privilege to take advantage of others. I could only remind myself that he was not able to touch me as long as I kept my eyes and lips shut. As long as I pretended to be asleep. As long as I could not be blamed for provoking him.

The bars of my cell rattled as he tickled his bat along the ridges.

"I know you're awake, darlin'. Won't you come out and play?" When his only answer was my silence, the breath rushed heavily out of his nose in anger and the bar halted as he spoke again. "You can ignore me all you want, pretty little bitch. You can be a self-righteous whore all you want. But your day is coming. And you will snap like a twig. Just remember," he hissed, "your day is coming." His heavy footsteps faded away down the hall, but his words remained.

_Your day is coming. _

**... **

The time came quickly. Before I even knew it, I was once again being dragged down the hall and to the Chamber. I was put in the jaws of the great iron beast and, as it closed, I had a feeling that I should make a run for it. But then the darkness settled around me; the contraption was closed and there would be no immediate escape now.

I was done for.

The pain came first, crawling up my senses and leaving them numb with tender pain, enflamming my skin and filling my body with agony.

It came in bursts; as I began to despair of ever feeling anything but this torture, the agony would stop and I would have relief - a pause for just long enough that I began to hope that I was done and that soon I would see the light once more. But then, as light to the sleeper, the pain would course once more and rivet my body, feverishly shivering my bones in torment.

They were playing with my mind. Toying with me.

**... **

I came to myself in my cell, wondering how many days had passed, finding that I didn't have the answers to give myself. I only knew that my skin felt as though it were ripping itself to shreds.

I waited for a day, waited until the guard changed, waited for their shuffling footsteps to trickle down the hall to their station. Then, with a careless clatter of handcuffs, I unchained myself and jumped to another cell. I was in too much pain to care. If I made myself look like a jackass, then I didn't give a fuck.

This prisoner was a male, I realized. Dark and clean-shaven, with dark eyes and dark circles underneath to match. Sleep-deprived. I could see his character written across his face. Every single emotion he was feeling was visible in his eyes.

"Hi," I croaked. "My name's Amy. I'm putting together a band of Jumpers to fight the paladins. Join?"

He stared at me in disbelief for a single moment before jerking his head in a dazed nod. I'm not sure he even knew what he was agreeing to, but he had agreed and I didn't care about anything else. Kneeling, I made quick work of his handcuffs and, with a quick snatch of his hand, we were gone, leaving only a sliver of shimmering air to indicate where we had been.

I found myself standing in my living room, looking about warily before setting up to lower myself onto the couch, explaining to the dark man as I did; "This was my apartartment before I got abducted. Make yourself at home." I still hadn't sat down yet. I was only still staring at the couch and wondering how the hell I was going to coax my sore muscles into sitting down.

But our new recruit didn't need to know that. No, he needed to think of his general as a hardass badass, not someone who cringed at the thought of sitting on a couch.

So I did the only thing I knew to do; I provided a distraction.

"So, I never did get your name."

"Daniel," he said - and his voice shocked me. It seemed to roll out of the heavens, it was so deep. As deep as thunder. But beautiful. If a bit maddeningly so.

"Well." I said blankly, staring at him. "That's nice."

A voice came from the hallway. I turned in gratitude at another distraction, even if it was not the best one that could have been provided. Stacy and Steve came sauntering in, holding hands and dazed looks on their faces. If it means anything, Steve's face was covered in lipgloss and Stacy seemed to have smeared hers everywhere.

I didn't even want to know.

They bubbled Daniel into their midst and chattered like idiots, all while I stood there in pain and wondered how to sit down. But no - I didn't want to sit down and have to listen to the annoying voices of my rescued minions. I jumped to my bedroom, gleefully lay down on the low-sitting bed, and closed my eyes. Ah. A mattress.

My bliss was not to last long, however. There was a disturbance of air and the floor creaked as his footsteps crossed to stand at the foot of the bed.

"Andy?" He asked.

Just the sound of his voice was enough to remind me of our last conversation; for a moment, I considered keeping my eyes shut and avoiding ever speaking to him again. But it was a fleeting, foolish thought that I immediately disregarded.

"Hey, Griffin." My voice creaked, suddenly rusty. I pretended that it wasn't because of the emotion clogged in my throat - it was because I had been lying down for five minutes. Yes. Yes, exactly that. Nothing else.

"What the fuck are you doing?" His tone was soft but his words could have been taken harshly. Somehow, I knew that he didn't mean for them to be. It was his way - our way - to speak so. We rarely meant anything by it.

"Resting. What the fuck else would I be doing on a bed?"

Avoiding the couch. But he didn't need to know that.

The bed creaked as his knees descended upon it and the mattress shifted underneath my back, rubbing against my wounds. My muscles tightened and I instinctively winced as shoots of pain shot through my body. He stilled.

"Roll over."

I didn't have the strength to disobey; I rolled over, cursing his astuteness all the while. I felt the air soothe my skin as he pulled up my shirt to investigate.

Silence.

"What the fuck happened? And don't tell me that bullshit story about the aliens."

"It was my turn again," I replied, not having the strength to come up with a smartass retort. Suddenly, my bones had been drained of their energy, as though as soon as I rested, my body realized how exhausted it was. I could still feel a whisper of his breath brushing against my tortured skin and to the scabbed, painful flesh, his breath was as a breath of heaven. "All I know is that it was worse than last time."

His weight disappeared and the bed resumed its undisturbed position. Before I could figure out whether I was relieved or disappointed by his lack of care, he was back through his jumpscar, holding a roll of bandage and a jar of ointment, both of which had obviously been innocently shoplifted.

He kneeled on the bed again, opening the jar and unwrapping the bandages with absent ease. All the same, I squirmed when his hands neared my wounds.

"Relax," his voice said, "I had a little sister."

The words themselves shocked me into still silence. It was the closest to opening up that I had ever witnessed coming out of Griffin. He was not the type to say things like that. There was also the fact that he was bandaging my back, which was out of character for him. Or at least, out of character for the character that he had always shown before. I wondered for a moment if being in the same apartment with the lovebirds had strangled him of his senses.

"Who are you?"

The reason revealed itself with that innocuous phrase. It was blackmail. If he did not continue bandaging, my wounds would likely become infected. Or I could ask someone else to bandage them. But he and I both knew that would never happen; I simply refused to ask.

He knew I would not refuse to tell him now. Not when he was doing me a favor. Give and receive.

Besides, I owed him an explanation. He had taken the trouble to go and find the name and as far as I was concerned, the name that I had left behind in my past was the name that was the key to me telling of my past.

"Who I was, you mean." I corrected him, slipping my eyelids closed so I did not have to be aware of how the world had begun to slip away. "My name was Emily."


	13. Fifteen Minutes

**Chapter 13 - Fifteen Minutes**

My name was Emily.

A lot can happen in fifteen minutes. The course of the world can be changed, the kitchen can be swept, or you could simply use your only phone call to summon someone to post your bail if you happened to be in jail. You could be shot and bleed out your life on the ground or fall in love at first sight with a tall, dark stranger only to lose him in the crowd.

A lot can happen in fifteen minutes. However, what happened to me in my fifteen minutes was not listed in the above. When I walked out of my fifteen minutes, my knees were weak and my back was bandaged, my skin still tingling from the memory of his skin on mine.

And hell, I wasn't about to stick around to find out what would happen if he returned. He, the boy with the electric blue eyes that had more power over me than a Paladin zapper, had stormed away and I was not waiting to see if he would come back any time soon.

He was only a boy. A hurt, angry, scared boy who had built up walls around himself and trained himself to never bring them down, no matter what. He had become impervious to damage, careless about hurt, and almost inhumane in his attempt to safeguard himself.

I wasn't waiting, no.

Unfortunately - or, rather not so unfortunately - I was back the next day, dragging along the next victim of shock who would be rehabilitated into our group of peaceful pacifists. Her name was Stephanie and, happily, she wasn't as high-pitched or as emotional as Stacy. Stacy, however, was ecstatic to have another girl in the group.

While they introduced themsves and Stacy offered to show Stephanie around, I cast my eyes around for the leather-jacket'ed figure who probably would have been sitting in front of the television, playing Xbox.

He was not there.

Somewhere deep down inside of me, something dropped. Either it was my heart into my stomach or a stone into my heart. But either way, I knew that I was disappointed at the absence of a certain head of tousled hair, and I hated it. I hated that I was disappointed and that he didn't care enough to come back, just as he had always maintained those walls so carefully. I had triggered his departure; I had crawled underneath his skin, into his mind, and seen things through his eyes.

Of course he hadn't stayed.

Attempting to ignore the heaviness that had settled inside my body and the weight that had nestled into my head, I walked over to a couple of roughly drawn sketches on the pin board that I had in my kitchen and for a moment, I simply stared at them. They were of places that I had constructed a few years earlier; safe houses, I guess.

There was one in the mountains - no. One in the downtown area of Bangkok - definitely no. But ah, perfect - the caves in Florida.

A few years before, I had had a paranoid stage where I constructed five safe houses, spread across the world. I drew sketches so I would be able to jump in a moment's notice, even if I had forgotten the landmarks and the locations. The caves in Florida were caves that formed a labyrinth. I had built a hidden entrance into one of the caves, stocked it with lights and rough provisions that would last a few years, and then left it alone. It would need major work if it was going to hold the number of people that I was thinking, but all the same, it was better. They were located close to a freshwater stream, no one would ever think of a safe house on the beach, and plus, the view was scenic.

I wasn't going to tell anyone until it was ready to move into, though. That was the one thing I decided.

But I had to get it ready soon. So my Paladin attacks became more and more frequent, more and more risky. I would collect one a day, then jump to the caves and begin work immediately. Perhaps it would have gotten done faster if more people were doing it, but I honestly didn't trust them. Most of them had been city slickers their entire lives and not ever even constructed a tent before. How would they ever manage to help me construct a safe- guarded safe house?

I was becoming more and more worried about my kidnapping the. Jumpers, though. Finally, when about eight had been rescued, I brought them to the cave and introduced them to their new home. The cave was spacious enough to construct makeshift rooms in - and it would have to do for the present time.

But I was becoming impatient. I began collecting two, three prisoners at a time. The Paladins would not remain I suspicious gore we. The guards were increasing and my time slots were becoming shorter but they had not yet begun to suspect that it was someone stillbin the prison. In their reasoning, why would someone stay if they could leave?

The answer was simple; so that I didn't walk into one of their traps blind. By staying, I would have an inkling of what was going on.

But I also had to put up with the consequences. Less prisoners meant less people to perform experiments on and therefore, the ones of us who were lucky enough to be left got to bear the brunt of the torture. Sessions began to come more and more frequent and each time I was dragged back to my cell, I did not remember it when I woke back up. All I remembered was the pain.

My body was bearing the brunt of it. I was wearing out. I was becoming emaciated and I could practically see myself turning into a sack of skin stretched over bones.

But there was more; when my eyes opened and I forced myself to explore my stiff body with my fingers to see how badly I was injured, I found new marks that had been added to the scores of lacerations and contusions. I had no way of knowing what had happened to me while I was blacked out. If any of the guards had decided to have their way with me -

I simply didn't know. It wasn't a luxury that I was allowed to have anymore.

But I kept on. I was stronger than what they were doing to me, no matter how much they pushed me. I could do it. I could do anything. I was the closest to invincible that humans could be.

Or do I told myself.

There were six of us left; Tom, me, and four other prisoners scattered all over the hallway. But my army had grown so much - I hadn't realized how many Jumpers the Paladins had actually been able to capture. But now I had freed them.

I went to rescue three more; I took no more than fifteen minutes getting them out and getting back in. Three left, including myself. I had one more trip left.

But then I came back from my "second-last" trip, only to find my arms grasped by the guards and their batons swinging against my body with a harsh reality. They had laid a trap for me. And I had been so stupid, so bloody eager, that I had walked into it blindly.

The blows rained down and I found that suddenly, I had nothing more to give. Now that I had been caught, it was almost as though I was content to lay there on the ground and take the beating. I simply didn't have anymore.

My last thought before the darkness swallowed me whole was of electric blue eyes and where they had gone.


	14. Blood & Axes

**Chapter 14 - Blood & Axes**

Everything hurt.

There were hands on my elbows, harshly cutting into my flesh and imprinting their harsh memories on the skin underneath the skin. These hands hurt in the pretense of upholding me as they dragged me along the stone floor.

There was no point in resisting. I was surrounded.

There was still hope, but yet no hope at present. Their hands were on my skin, tasers on their belts, and my feet were trailing me, scraping against the rough-hewn stones. If an escape was to be made, it was not at this point. Yet, at the same time, I wondered if an escape route was made clear, if I would be able to manage. My bones were tired - so tired. Even dragged, they were too weary to move. I was as rubber; heavy and useless.

They brought me into the Experimentation Room, which I recognized even as I entered backwards. There were memories in this place; pleading screams of agony had left their mark and now there hung in the air a great dampness, as if the screams had stayed and shrouded in the room as a thick, damp, muffling veil.

Things were looking increasingly dim.

If I was to die, this would be as good a place as any to do it.

They slung me down onto the floor, the impact jolting through my body with all the pain of a thousand volts of lightning. My eyes burned dry from the pain. But I would not cry in front of these bastards. I would not cry.

I refused to.

One of the lab coat scientists walked up the stairs to meet the hulking gorillas that had brought me into his clutches and he smiled that creepy, slimy sort of smile that fit his wormy mouth.

"This is the one who's been freeing the prisoners," the deep voice of my own personal favorite pet gorilla sounded out.

I rolled over to look at him.

"Why, Freddie, I didn't know you cared," I cooed charmingly, smiling up at them like a loon.

The kick from his inforced-toe boot came swiftly and suddenly, hitting me in my midsection. I had expected it, anticipated the pain that came bubbling up from inside of me, predicted the warm liquid that slid up my throat. But all the same, I coughed on that pain, on that heated liquid.

Out spattered blood, the red staining the stone.

But yet the gorillas ignored me, attending to their master of evil, the lab coat with the wormy mouth.

"You have done very well. Now-"

"They did well?" I interrupted, scoffing from the floor, ignoring the thickness of my throat. "I liberated almost the entire lot of cells. Yeah, they did _so_ well-"

The boot came again and I simply spat out the slippery red liquid, smiling all the more, letting the remaining blood coat my teeth and slip into the cracks of my crazed grin. Even if I did not have the use of my body, I had the use of my words and my wits. I wasn't going to show them weakness; I would go down taunting them, as I had when I had lived free and wild.

Blood is thicker than water and I still had blood flowing through my veins.

"Take her down."

"Ooh, so threatening," I hissed as the gorillas picked me up again, making sure to beat me up as much as they could on the way down. "You're all just a bunch of little girls quaking in their stilettos. You call yourselves paladins? Don't make me laugh."

Freddie's fist hit me somewhere that was hardly polite. I snapped. Somehow, from somewhere, the strength came for me to twist my body and use the momentum to spring up and bite at Freddie's ear, my teeth making connection and biting straight through the cartilage. Blood filled my mouth and I spat out the chuck of Freddie's ear that had miraculously come off, twisting my body to attack the next gorilla who was standing like an idiot, staring at me in shock, no doubt wondering where this strength had come from the limp, pitiful heap of rags.

I bared my teeth and pounced on him, grinning like a madwoman as the paladin guards across the room darted for me. There were five; too many for me to handle. Still, I fought like a cat, scratching, biting, kicking, and placing well-aimed punches like a tornado.

I felt a hand find its' way across my cheek, backhanding me. The sheer force behind the blow sent me to the floor and my eyes unconsciously widened as the gorilla picked up one of the implements of torture; a rusty ax.

Paladins had been known to chop off a few fingers or toes once the Jumper's back was already full of lashes. I had heard of this punishment but never experienced it. Except the gorilla was not aiming for my fingers or my toes. He was aiming for my neck.

Suddenly, all of my strength was gone. The exhileration of a fight had disappeared and, for the first time in years, I knew fear.

The ax descended -

But then a body appeared from nowhere, forcing the paladin down to the floor.

There stood an angel with a leather jacket and tousled hair, electric eyes blazing as he picked up the ax and decapitated the stunned paladin. But he didn't even so much as glance at me, turning instead to attend to the two paladins that were standing there, bemused as to where their new opponent had come from. Before they could even think again, he had already cracked one skull with the blunt side of the ax and begun to beat up the other.

Before he turned around, I was already gone.

If I had stayed, perhaps I would have seen the curses forming on his lips and his panic to get to my jumpscar before it faded. But I didn't say - and I didn't see.

I was already in the cells, forcing my hands to cooperate, willing them to keep from shaking as I hastily moved from one prisoner to the next, unlocking their handcuffs and setting them free, telling them all simultaneously who I was and where we were going, about the organization to fight and -

A body stood in the hallway between cells, staring with wide - and yet infuriated - eyes. I had no time for it. Even if he had just saved my life, I would not look at him, just as he would not look at me when he was in the midst of battle. This was a battle, as much as any other.

Sirens were sounding all around us and I could already hear the tramping of footsteps from the paladins. Quickly, I moved from one Jumper to the other, jumping and leaving them instantaneously to go back for another. One, two, three. Accounted for.

But Griffin had not followed me.

With an irritated growl, I jumped back to find him in the midst of paladins, stubbornly fighting, even though it was obvious that they would eventually overwhelm him, although he was holding his own. There were just simply too many.

I jumped into the fray, kicking and punching as rapidly as humanly possible, jumping and spotting into places that would make my attacks all the more lethal, making my way over to him.

"GO." He yelled at me and I caught a single, fleeting glimpse of his shocking electric blue eyes, that were just as dangerous as a thousand volts of electricity shooting towards his opponents.

So I went. But not before I grabbed his wrist to take him with me. We found ourselves in the cave dwelling. He whirled on me with snapping and crackling eyes, glaring me down, his beautiful mouth forming words that fell on deaf ears.

My strength had vanished once again. My bones were as butter. I felt the world tilting and going dark and that was all that I remembered before my body landed in arms and I was lost to the world.


	15. Dandy

**A/N; **Guess who's back, guyz? :) This girl! A huge huge huge huge huge huge huge HUGE shoutout to the fantabulous **KigekiRyuu483, HeadbangGirl, Black Wolf-Dog, littlebabydevon, DarkFireAngel00, anonymous, loserkid, **and I'd like to dedicate this chapter to **Benevolently Cynical** for being amazing and taking the time to write me a message to express the amazingness that made my month. But! Enough rambling! Thank you to everyone who alerted and favorited. I'm excited to say that I'm very excited about the next few chapters. GUESS WHAT'S COMING UP, GUYZ. Just guess. You'll probably be right. I've already written it because I got so inspired and then I got so excited about it, so expect a few quick updates. They may or may not be quicker if people review and tell me how I'm doing so far and what they'd like to see :)

OH! That reminds me. Someone asked me if there were going to be any lemons between Griffin and Andy. I will tell you right now that if (if if if if if IF) it happens, it will not be graphic. I'm all about subtlety :) and I don't want a description of the sex (that they may or may not) to be a focal point in the story. If they did hook up, it would be a turning point. But _not_ a focal point. Does anybody out there get me? I don't want to seem like I'm condemning anyone who writes that stuff – but it's just not my style.

ANYWHO. Enjoy the chapter.

Read & Review? :)

**Chapter 15 - Dandy**

I never knew that you could still have a headache when you were dead.

"Andy?"

And I definitely hadn't known that there were angels with Griffin's voice.

"Guuuuh?" I tried to open my eyes but the light seeping into my pupils collided with the pounding drum inside my head and suddenly I felt dizzy. But still, I forced them open and peered at the angel who had deigned to speak to me. Damn. He looked like Griffin, too. He couldn't be an angel. Mere angels didn't have eyes like that. "Are you, like, God?" The sound of my own voice reverberated inside my ears and suddenly, the pounding was even worse.

Wasn't there a saying that there wouldn't be any pain in heaven? Shit. I wasn't dead.

"Isn't that the second time you've asked me that?" The amusement in his voice was also present on his lips as they curled upwards.

Double shit. Since when did Griffin smile?

"Yes, well," I said, tearing my eyes away from his face and feigning nonchalance despite my hangover-like headache, "I have my reasons."

"Oh, really? You don't say." He stared at me for a couple of seconds and then spoke again; "You know," he said, "I have a new nickname for you after this whole... experience."

"Oh, really? What's that? Lady I Need An Aspirin?"

"Sleeping Beauty."

My eyes darted to him for a second. There was a teasing look in his eye and - perhaps that's when I started inwardly realizing something was seriously wrong. He was happy. Happier than I'd ever seen him.

"Thanks, Prince Charming," I retorted, "but I'm hardly the type."

He shrugged, that look still curling over his features. And I found I liked it.

"How long have I been out, anyways?" I asked, starting to eye him to check for any signs of a personality changing mental disease.

"Six days." Shit. "Apparently, Sleeping Beauty needed her rest."

I think I had preferred it when he called me Tiger.

"Oh, fuck off, you ol' bugger." I turned back to staring at the ceiling. A few moments of silence passed. "How have things been?"

"Fine. Just fucking dandy fine."

Ah,_ there_ was my Griffin.

Shit. When had he become mine?

Thinking like this was making the dagger in my brain stab my poor head more and more harshly.

"The paladins are searching for you. Not the other prisoners; just you."

I looked over at him. The teasing look was gone from his eyes, leaving behind the man I knew, the wounded boy wearing a shell. There was a different expression in his eyes, a certain set to his jaw. It wasn't the look of annoyance that I had somehow expected; he wasn't exasperated that the paladins were after me in particular and he didn't see me as a burden that he was forced to bear. Not anymore.

For a moment, I wondered if my instincts were correct and that flash in his eye was protectiveness - but I immediately dismissed the thought. Griffin was Griffin. Protective of no male, female, or shemale.

"Well. That's dandy." My headache was slowly leaving. Very slowly. Too slowly. "Can I have an aspirin?"

Before I could think about what would happen if he didn't have any, he had whipped out a bottle and thrown it at me.

My fingers were numb and shaking, I realized as I clumsily caught it and attempted to screw it open. When I'd finally managed to open the damn thing, I shook out a few and swallowed them dry, leaning back, closing my eyes, and waiting for the painkillers to kick in.

"How do you feel?"

Shit.

Had he just asked me how I felt?

I cracked one eye open to check his face. Double shit. He had a serious expression on his face and he was watching me like he wanted to know the answer.

"Who are you and what have you done with Griffin O'Connor?" The words slipped out before I could catch hold of them and shove them back down my windpipe. If I was the blushing type, my face would have turned cherry red when he looked at me. But all the same, it was a good question. I didn't like the new Griffin. Whenever he spoke, I got a funny feeling in my chest. And while it was pleasant and all that shit, I didn't like the impression I was getting along with it; I had the distinct foreboding that this new oddly contrasting heaviness and lightness in my chest, this fluttery feeling in my fingers, this euphoric feeling in my ears that made me want to smile - this was a weakness. And this wasn't me.

If Griffin O'Connor had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a robotic duplicate who had nice eyes and actually cared about people, then I would hunt Griffin O'Connor down personally. And kill him. Because the aliens that had gotten him had gotten me too.

"How have you been?" I asked before I could stop myself, mentally slapping myself upside the head. I was a fucking idiot. I wasn't supposed to care how he was. And I didn't care how he was. I didn't, I didn't, I swear to fucking death that I didn't.

I couldn't look at him. I couldn't, I wouldn't meet his eyes. But I could still feel his questioning gaze on me, incredulity seeping through his pores, and I suddenly found myself praying to Whoever or Whatever was up in heaven that he would answer the question and not run out of the room screaming in horror.

But wait. I didn't care if he ran out of the room, remember? Because I didn't care about him and I refused to care about him. I wouldn't.

"Fine." He said. There was a very long moment of silence as this single word sunk into the air and absorbed the option of speaking to each other again.

He cleared his throat.

"Just fine?" A soft voice asked as my eyes moved towards him. Although I felt the reverberations in my throat and the movement of my lips, I couldn't believe I had said it. A thought had not been formed to say such a thing; I hadn't been consciously aware of speaking. And that had definitely not fucking sounded like me.

His eyes looked up and our gazes met. I fervently wished I could read his mind as the expression of his eyes changed but there was no magical breakthrough as he stood up from the chair beside my bed and, without another word, he walked out.

There was no reaction for me to make. I simply lay back in bed and tried not to think about the fucking stupidity that had come out of my mouth, the fucking feeling in my stomach when I thought about what I tried not to think about, and the fucking ridiculousness of what my stomach was telling me and what my instincts were insisting. I wanted to stay. My instincts told me to leave.

**...**

There was no way he could contain it if she was in his line of sight. He was unexplainably relieved that she was awake. That she was okay. Although her bones were sticking out of her skin now and her cheeks were sunken in and if he was a doctor, he would have sworn on his life that she needed bedrest. But she was alive. She was okay.

If he had stayed in that room with her for one more second -

Things would have gotten overly complicated.

She had overly complicated things already, but to act on the rash urges that he felt would be insanity. He recognized the way he felt when he looked at her and the worry he had felt when her limp body had fallen into his arms; worry to the point of pain, inner pain that would make him scratch his skin or kill a paladin just to take it out on something on the outside. He knew this feeling. It was attachment. Losing something and then not knowing what to do. And by God, he would not let this happen to him again.

He would not get attached. His love was poison; for him to love someone... It was like a death mark on their skin. If he loved them, they died. It was as simple as that. But he wouldn't let it happen this time.

He was Griffin O'Connor. He did not get attached.


	16. Changing the Change

**A/N; **So, holy crap, I just realized that my last post before this was the day after my one-year anniversary of posting this story - and I never even noticed! Daggum. Time does fly past. I hadn't even realized it was even close to a year since we started this journey. I'm a little ashamed of myself for that.

Shout-out to the fantabulous** Black Wolf-Dog, HeadbangGirl, Anonymous, Benevolently Cynical, **and** loserkid **for being the spectacular people that they are and reviewing. As oversaid as it is, it makes me so so so happy to hear from you guys and hear what you have to say about what I'm writing. :) Review replies are at the bottom!

I would like to dedicate this chapter to** AusisWinds-13 **for the multiple reviews :) ah, it makes me so happy when I see I got another review from you! You've no idea. :)

Aaaaaah, guys! Guess who gets to go to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises? This girl! I'm so excited. :D

Aight. Enough chat. Read. ;)

…

**Chapter Sixteen – Changing the Change**

It was a long, slow recovery. Either that or my brain was incapable of measuring time quickly and the years that I felt like I had spent in bed were really just a few days. The only times I really saw Griffin during my entire bedrest was when he came in to bring me food or to tell me not to get out of bed. It seemed as though I would move a single muscle and he would be in the doorway, staring me down threateningly, saying, "Don't be a fucking idiot. Stay in bed."

Like I was some sort of invalid.

But eventually, I sat up. And then I stood up. And then I walked. And eventually, I watched the newbies train. Although what Griffin called training, I wouldn't exactly. He set them against each other, told them to fight, and watched them like they were two dogs in an arena, placed there for his own amusement.

About two weeks after my return, I walked over to where he was standing, watching the newbies. And I said, "Griffin. We need a new training system."

He turned to look at me with a smirk on those lips and he said, "That's perfectly fine with me, tiger."

I called a meeting the next day.

Seeing all of the untrained Jumpers sitting in front of me was rather... unsettling. I had rescued them. Every last one of them. And I hadn't really realized how many there were until they were all staring at me in the face.

Shit. They were all a bunch of untrained wussies?

This was going to be even harder than I had thought.

"Okay. So. You guys should probably all recognize me; I'm the one who magically broke into your cells and busted your asses out of there. Now, in case some of you forgot, the reason I bothered was because I intend to end the war here and now. And I need an army of Jumpers to do that." They were all still staring at me. "Now, how many of you can fight?"

Every hand went up.

Shit. I had a load of cocky Jumpers on my hands. I had been watching them, as creepy as that sounds; only two out of the lot of them could actually fight.

"Uh. Awesome. Great. Fucking fantastic." I glanced over at Griffin. He was staring at me with that twinkle in his eye. Amusement. He was amused.

Bastard.

"Okay! So," I continued, "we're going to have training sessions. And basically, if you've ever taken yoga... Yeah, it's not going to be like that."

At first, all I did was split them up into groups and send them off to do different shit. One group had to go jog a few miles to get in shape and the like. Another team would learn basic fighting moves with me. And the last group was with Griffin, learning how to jump quickly and efficiently.

I had the strangest feeling that they would get their heads snapped off.

The groups were supposed to rotate once the group jogging the few miles got back. Some poor unfortunate soul decided he could jump better than Griffin, tried to argue with him about which one of them was better, and ended up with a face full of fist.

Ah, Griffin.

A few days passed. There were small improvements in each area. Needless to say, those improvements were minuscule and I got headaches every day from being introduced to the sheer stupidity of some of the Jumpers but, as an optimist would say, it was better than nothing.

I wasn't quite what you could call optimistic.

But, as terrible as it seemed, things began to look up. Everything changes with time and life. Experience kicks in and before you know it, when you're standing in front of the mirror, you don't even recognize the person staring back at you. The same with me. My bruises faded after only a week, heavy doses of napping diminished the severity of my bloodshot eyes, and I developed a sense of hygiene once again. The bones still stuck out of my skin so sharply that sometimes I was afraid I wouldn't be able to breathe without feeling the pain of my ribs scraping against my skin. But I knew one day, even my physical state would be back to what it had once been. The evidence of torment would completely vanish except for the traces it left in my eyes and the impact it had on my mind.

It was ironic, really; the paladins hunted and killed the Jumpers because they believed that the Jumpers were inhumane. But the Jumpers weren't the ones who tortured people within a millimeter of their lives.

"Hey, Tiger," Griffin's voice said right next to my ear, jerking me out of my thoughts with a jump that literally had me falling four feet through the air to land sprawling on my face on the floor, glaring up at Griffin's smirking, self-satisfied face.

For the first time in my life, I cursed my fast reflexes. Quick to jump away from danger, quick to survive. But these days, I took everything for danger.

And all my thoughts were morbid.

"Griffin," I grumbled, picking myself up and sprawling back onto the couch that I had been so happily inhabiting before he had ever come along. "What brings you to this unhappy, uneventful place called The Couch? I thought the minions were in need of coaching."

"Not your fucking tool." He retorted, making a move to sit on my face. I moved and he sat down. But my head wasn't going anywhere; it commandeered his leg. "I left those two fighting goons in charge of the lot."

"I thought they were mature enough to be irritated about that."

"Nope. Still fucking pansies like the rest of them." He made a sudden, unnecessary clicking noise with his fingers before a silence could set in. "Speaking of which. That reminds me. I was listening to these two guys talk about how much Twilight sucks and then Steve - you know, the guy who trades spit with Stacy every chance he gets? - pipes up," Griffin switched his voice to falsetto and reached up a hand to smooth his hair, "Team Bella!"

Our lungs simultaneously burst into loud laughter, almost as our bodies' natural attempt to break the air. It was almost uncomfortable. Not awkward. Simply... Not quite right. His laughter died down as mine ended in coughs. My lungs were still weak from my... ordeal.

"Well, there's your sense of humor." His hand dropped down to his lap again and he began to unconsciously wind pieces of my hair around his finger. "I thought it didn't exist anymore."

I didn't want to think any more. I didn't want to think about my recent past, didn't want to think about the frailty of my body and how close I came to death, didn't want to think about ironic situations and how humans were so terribly inhumane. I didn't want to think. Not anymore. Not any more.

"It doesn't," I replied in a robot voice. "I am a cyborg."

We laughed again, but this time it was lower and less forcedly enthusiastic, more genuine. And this time I didn't cough. I couldn't afford to. I didn't want to be constantly reminded anymore. I didn't want to be silent. Silence was blessed but it was also pointless. He could see that I was human now. Because of my sudden and new state of frailty, everyone could. So I didn't see the point in pretending that I was immortal any further. God knew that Andy hadn't been.

And so even though I knew that there was a better chance of Griffin shoving my head off of his leg and standing up and running away and never coming back again than of him actually listening, I opened my mouth again.

"It changes you, you know?" There was silence and I could feel the end coming. My voice spoke again, dissecting that silence with a much quieter tone than before. "It changed me."

His finger paused in my hair for one split second and my eyes closed as I braced for the impact of rejection. I was as uncomfortable as he was with emotion and with change. And if I had been in his position, I would have been gone long ago.

But his finger kept on twirling after that one terrifying, heart-stopping second.

"Well then," he said, as normal as could be even though I had so much on my mind and so much to struggle through, "unchange."

My eyes stayed closed and for a moment, my ears didn't believe themselves. This was Griffin. This was rejecting, cold, untouchable, sarcastic, world-cursing, paladin-killing Griffin. And I was... Well, I was me. And yet I somehow knew now that he cared. And that was all. And that was more than what I needed. But it was right. And that was all that mattered as my mind slipped away from my body only a few minutes later and I fell asleep to the sounds of the television and to the feel of Griffin playing with my hair.

I had never known that Griffin was the type.

**...**

**Review Replies**

**Black Wolf-Dog; **Gasp! I'm alive? Lol. Aight, so, I have to tell you. Your review was hilarious. Like, hilarious. But I have to agree about the life-and-death-no-time-for-sex. I mean, seriously! Especially in your case, since they were in a frigging jungle. With companions. Just saying haha. I really really really want to write a kiss with them. I mean... I admit it, I did. And I was going to post it... But then I decided it was for the best if I just let them stew a bit. O:) haha. But honestly, this is killing me too. Stupid thinkers D: lol. I promise I won't disappear again! (crosses fingers and hopes I'm telling the truth... :3 okay, okay, I'll try my best to not be a stranger anymore :D how's that?)

**HeadbangGirl; **Awh, you always have something useful to say! Even if it's just about how good I'm doing! :D haha. Those reviews make me the happiest anyways xD lol. And thanks :) the writer is really not one to judge the quality of the story so it always means the world to me when someone (one of my best FF friends, no less) tells me I'm doing not only good but AMAZING :) so thank you so so much! :D

**Anonymous; **Awh, thank you so much! :) I love you too! Hahaha ;p but in all seriousness, thank you so much! I hope you continue to love it as much as you have so far! :)

**Benevolently Cynical; **1. My pleasure :) and thank you! :D I think that "FOREVER" was just a tad bit pointed ;p haha 2. You get me :D and you get my writing! Aidodncispanciwpgh;/, I don't think there is any greater compliment to a writer than their reader actually understanding what is going on and what the characters are feeling. So, as stupid as this sounds, thank you for understanding :D haha. I actually wasn't speaking specifically of a girlfriend love or anything like that but of general love. I mean, love is pretty unmistakable and to feel it for someone - and then their death be because of you? To feel responsible for the death of your parents not only that but to lose everyone that you ever even cared about just because YOU exist? I mean... that's unimaginable for me, even though I'm not even close to my parents. That's where my love = poison came from :) 4. Don't worry :) I'm not going to recklessly abandon this story haha. I'm emotionally invested. This journey SHALL be finished, even if it happens when I have white hairs and I'm sitting on the porch with my knitting needles in one hand and a smartphone in the other. (I write on a smartphone haha.) I promise, it will be done someday :) as assuring as that sounds. Haha.

**AusisWinds-13;** Your reviews are far, far too epic and I loved them far, far too much to be able to grovel enough to express my gratitude. So I would just like to say, straight up, thank you! :) And I hope you liked this chapter (especially since it has your name written across it in big, bold letters lol.)

**loserkid; **Let me tell YOU, mate, your review made my frigging day. Like, no frigging lie. Aaaaah! *flail* there really are no words :) I'm so completely happy that you're enjoying the story and I hope that you continue to! Thank you so much :D


	17. Ready

**A/N;** HEEEY. So I have some bad news. I can't update for two weeks because I'm going up to Montana to visit my brother. We're driving across the country, so I'll be stuck in a car for like three thousand hours. And I didn't have time to write up the Review Replies because we're leaving in a few minutes. I'm so sorry! D: I would like to say that I loved every single review I got. You guys made me laugh :)

In happier news, I went to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises! Aaaaaaaah ohmygoodness ohmygoodness ohmygoodness I love Tom Hardy! He's such a talented actor. But anyways.

Till week after next! Enjoy :)

**Chapter 17 - Ready**

"I think we're ready."

"You think we're ready?"

"Yeah, I think we're ready."

"I think someone's gonna die."

"And it better be the paladin. Because if one of the Jumpers die, I will kill their ass."

"I think that defeats the purpose of them dying in the first place." A single corner of his mouth turned upwards.

"Smartass."

"You liiiiiiiiike it." His grin stretched from one ear to the other as he sidled up to me slowly.

"What the hell did I ever do to you to make you so annoying? Shit. I didn't know you hated me so much." But I couldn't stop my own smile from appearing and answering his. If being annoying had ever suited anyone, it suited Griffin. I liked to think that this was what it was like back when I annoyed him. But, if it was and I had amused him instead of annoyed him, he definitely had a better control over his smiling than I did.

"You existed, that's what you did. Your existence alone is enough to drive any annoying boy over the edge."

I gave him a very odd look.

"Is that a compliment or an insult I hear?"

He cleared his throat very quickly, as if suddenly realizing that his antagonization had morphed into what was almost what you could call very verbally abusive flirting.

"Anyways. Who were you thinking of, for testing out the abilities of the stupids?"

"Stupids?" I asked, as thankful for the distraction as he was.

"I'm trying to find a good code name for them and they're all fucking stupid, so."

"Thanks."

"Did I say you were?"

"Well, anyway," I said quickly, "I was thinking of Caufley."

He nodded slowly, folding his arms over his chest as if he was an old saint that was mulling over thoughts very intently. All he needed was a long white beard to stroke.

"Not bad, not bad..."

Caufley was a paladin, obviously. One of the ones I'd been tracking for a few weeks before I'd met Griffin. There were plenty of times that I could have taken him out, but I knew he would be an easy target, so I had been saving him for one of my "bad days." The kind of day when you lounge around in your sweatpants all day long and pretend to be doing something useful.

Killing Caufley would make nobody sweat.

Except for maybe the hardly-trained Jumpers I had on my hands.

"Are you sure that there's going to be an opening, though?" He looked at me closely and I knew, I just _knew_ that he was mentally sizing me up and wondering if I was strong enough for the task.

I gave him a half-hearted glare.

It worried me that he worried about me. I simply didn't like it when people worried about me. I was strong enough to handle this. I was vulnerable, yes, but that didn't stop me from kicking ass.

And as sweet as Griffin's worrying about me might have been, I had never been the type for sweet. And I was _damn_ sure he wasn't either.

"Caufley's too amateur to not leave an opening. Enough with the Mother Hen act, Griffin," I said. "If I can't take out _Caufley_, I would probably go kill myself. The guy is a weakling. And besides, I'm going to hang back and let the punks do the fighting. I mean, what's the point of training if you're not going to train? I'm just going along so if one of them is actually so incompetent as to start getting their ass handed to them by Caufley, I'll be there to intervene."

"Shit," he smirked, though there remained the vaguest shadow in his eyes, "all I asked was if you thought there was going to be a fucking opening. No need to go on a fucking rampage. If you ask me, you want me to worry about you."

"Keep up your delusions, _Mother Hen_."

I think we were probably both hiding smirks as we turned and headed our separate ways. We had work to do.

**...**

"Tom? THOMAS! Anybody seen Tom?" I inquired, peeking into the seperate rooms curiously. All I received in return was a very odd looks, a nonchalant shrug from an idiot frying out his brain with a gaming console, and a feminine, flirty shake of the head aimed at somebody else who happened to be of the masculine gender. "THOMAS!"

I didn't find him, needless to say. And I didn't really know _why_ I had wanted to see him. But I had.

"Yeah," one guy was audibly whispering a few hours later as I sat on the couch, frying my brain out with a gaming console. "She was yelling for some guy."

"What guy?"

I knew that whisper.

"I dunno. Some dude named Thomas."

"Thomas?"

"That's what I'm saying, man." The whisperer in question stole a few furtive glances at me as I ignored them with my eyes and paid attention with my ears. It paid off to know what people were saying about you, regardless if it was just a passing mention. "I swear, man, she's going frigging bonkers, dude. The lady's got some nuts and bolts and a few screws loose in the old rust bucket, if you know what I mean. She's as looney as a jack-in-the-box."

Thanks.

I think.

"Hasn't she always been?"

Griffypoo had a point.

I could hear his footsteps approaching but I didn't spare him a glance.

"X-Box?"

"Yup." I answered, eyes still glued to the television screen, fingers moving over the controller with all the skill of a pro.

"Call of Duty?"

"Yup."

He sat down on the couch next to me, crossing his arms and staring at the screen along with me.

"Who the hell is Thomas?"

"Oh, you know." Enter Scottish accent. "Thoooooomas."

"Oh, yeah, yeah. The one you told me about, with the Middle Eastern background?"

One of my hands abandoned the controller to start hitting at him as he laughed and blocked my attempted abuse. Except it wasn't really abuse: it was just retaliation.

"I thought you said he was Mexican and Indian."

"I was wrong. Definitely Arabian."

I died.

"Thanks. I mean, really. Thanks. For making me die."

"What can I say?" He swiveled so he was lying down on the couch, his head all over me before I let it fall in my lap and just held the controller over his heavy skull. "I'm just that distracting."

"Fucking booger, you are. You know that? A fucking booger."

"Last time I checked, boogers don't fuc-"

"Oh, shut it." I rubbed the controller into his face. It was his fault, really: he had chosen to lie there. Just because he thought it would distract me.

Well, it wouldn't.

Silence reigned as I quietly played the game, calmly killing foes left and right and in front and diagonal and in all directions.

"You really suck at this."

As if.

I was kicking ass.

Like, donkey ass.

So I was kicking the ass of an ass because I was kicking so much frigging ass.

"You can't do any better, Mother Hen."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Got a second controller?"

I looked down at him.

"Why don't you go _get _one, Sparky?"

"You mean... Go all the way to the store just for a second controller? So much time..."

"You're the one who wanted to play."

"Fine, fine..."

He vanished.

After being absent for less than thirty seconds, he returned with a box in his hands and an innocent expression on his face.

"It cost so much money," he said. "You owe me big time."

We were silent again. It was a glorious silence, filled with the furious clicking of game controllers and the concentrated breathing of two immersed individuals.

"You really suck at this."

"I just frigging killed you! You care to revise that statement?" I asked smugly, smiling a smile that no doubt resembled a very self-satisfied cat.

"No." He retorted just before he died by my hand again. He threw down the controller and stalked off, muttering, "I'm having a bad day. That's all."

My evil laughter chased him out of the room. If he had been a dog, I would have sworn that I could see his tail tucked firmly between his legs.

**...**

"I swear, we're ready!"

"Are you fucking kidding me? Look at those weak-ass wimpy excuses for Jumpers. Look at them! They're quaking in their pants." He hissed in reply, his mouth set vehemently. "I swear, I can smell urine in the air!"

"So what if someone pisses themselves? It must be some kind of skin treatment or some shit like that."

"Andy."

"Griffin, it's fucking _Caufley_."

"Fine." His eyes hardened like dark pebbles. "Go kill yourself. I don't give a fuck."

"Griffin-"

He walked off without another word, without a backward glance, without so much as a 'Good luck' for good luck.

Arrogant bastard.

"Okay, guys." I addressed the two weak-ass wimpy Jumpers I had selected for testing out Caufley. One of them was Stacy. The other was a nondescript I had never asked the name of. "He's patrolling a Jumper hotspot in Cairo. We duck him into an alley, beat him up, and jump him somewhere. Okay?"

Suddenly, I wished Griffin was still there to make fun of my phrasing and sarcastically tell me that it was a fucking master plan. And maybe to even get onto me about the stupidity of this.

But damn, the silence was so sweet to my ears. I was so fucking tired of hearing him talk about how this wasn't a good idea and I wasn't strong enough.

Fuck it all to hell, I didn't need someone to tell me I wasn't as strong as I usually was: I already knew.

"Okay, guys. Ready?"

The lack of reassurance I received from the two rookies made my lips form a firm line and my jaw clench. Suddenly, I knew that Griffin had been right: this was fucking stupidity. But I wasn't turning back. I wasn't going to cancel a training mission just because I had a bad feeling; it would be fucking ridiculous.

And my pride wouldn't let me.

"Okay." What the fuck was I doing. I reached out and grabbed the hands of the two wimpy asses. "Ready, set..." Jump.

It's amazing how quickly things can go wrong. Like you can just stand there and watch everything turn south like it's some kind of circus.

There were too many screams. Too much noise. Too much struggling.

I realized too late.

Caufley wasn't alone.

Cursing myself for the stupidest mistake I could have made, I jumped into the fray, dodging the steroid tasers and landing blows wherever I could.

But then it happened.

Stacy jumped on me, clinging to me as if she were drowning and I were there only as a buoy to pull her up and keep her safe.

It's hard to fight when you have a chick becoming your second skin.

I hardly felt anything; I only heard a crack and for a single moment, I felt dizzy. I could feel the air rushing at me as the ground came up to meet my face, but I had just enough wits to catch myself and jump a few yards away, out of reach of their hands. But I hadn't counted on their steroid tasers.

A beam of light ripped through me, searing pain embracing my body with harsh love.

It was over.

I was done for.


	18. Oh My God!

**A/N;** SURPRISE! Okay, so it's not really a surprise. But in my defense, I _did_ think about stealing my mother's laptop (with her permission, of course) to post a chapter, but alas, she hath no Internet connection. So I resigned myself to waiting and reading and writing.

I must say. It's been a very happy time. My niece and nephew are terrific (my nephew especially) and while the food is lacking, the scenery in Montana is much better than burning, humid Georgia. Blegh. I decided I was going to college in Denver, but who cares, right? Anywhos.

In other news! My God. I have. The. Biggest. Crush. On Tom Hardy. And if you guys don't know who that is... Don't worry. Nobody else did either. I'll tell you this; I'm such a hardcore hipster. I crushed on Tom Hardy when he was in Wuthering Heights (as crazy as I sound for admitting that because the character he plays is not crush-worthy. But the actor is...) never mind him appearing in The Dark Knight Rises. As friggin' BANE. I think I died when I found out, let alone when I watched the movie. (Oh, I went to go see it a second time.) I'm doing a TDKR fic. Because Bane's character is so frigging AMAZING and I would like to see it humanized a bit more. Everyone starts out somewhere, yeah? I want him to feel real. Not like a monster. You guys should go check it out if you've seen TDKR and leave me a review and tell me what you think. That would totally make my day. But then again, it would make my day if you guys reviewed this chapter, let alone checked out my new love.

But enough of my ranting! I will sum it all up; my two-week leave was great but I missed you guys and you all should go see The Dark Knight Rises because it's an awesome movie.

And I think you guys will love me after this chapter. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyways.

READ!

**Chapter 18 - Oh My God!**

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" She was shrieking, reaching out desperately to snag his arm with first her nails and then her claw-like fingers.

He acted with his first instinct; run.

While perhaps other people had the admirable instinct to fight their opponents, Jones had always followed that noble tradition of running away and never confronting something that had even the remotest chance of besting him.

Even if Amy was fighting to save him.

He found himself back at his new home, Jumpers surrounding him as Stacy continued to shriek hysterically. He found himself grabbed by the collar by a strong hand and whirled around, crackling blue eyes glaring straight into his without any sign of so much as blinking.

Jones found himself wishing that he had stayed and fought.

"Where is she?" The blue eyes growled. "Where the fuck is she?"

"Who?" Jones asked dumbly, mind dumb with fear. Not that it wasn't always dumb.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?"

Jones had no way of knowing that the blue eyes' mind was dumb with fear as well, but a different fear in every way.

"Uh, uh - I don't know. We left her there."

He could not have said anything worse. The blue eyes darkened and deepened and threatened until they were almost an abyss, swallowing the breath in Jones' lungs. But the hand dropped him and, even as the eyes promised to deal with him later, they vanished along with their owner.

**...**

Even with electric currents coursing through my entire body, I could feel my instincts kicking in. I had come too far to be done in by a stupid taser that was far too strong for its' own good. If they thought that I, paladin hunter Andy DiMotti, was going to be done in by their torture and their lightning, then they were quite mistaken.

I struggled violently against the wires holding me firmly to the ground, the current zapping through my body with the strength of a thousand bolts of lightning. The paladin whose taser was holding me captive approached my quivering body, sneering with arrogance. The other two paladins were in the background, muttering and snickering betweenst themselves. Douches.

"Did you really think you could take us down?" Step. Step. Step. "You are too weak, too insignificant. You don't have the numbers. You don't have the brains." Step. Step. Stop. He spat on my shaking body, the spit landing somewhere on my shirt in the stomach region. Even though it had not touched my skin, the spot burned. This would not be tolerated. Would not. "How could you possibly think that you could ever defeat us?"

"Quite easily," I forced out of my raw throat. And I showed him exactly how. I figured I was doing him a favor, really. He had, after all, asked. And being the polite genteel woman that I am, I kicked my legs, hitting him behind the knees and toppling him over. His hand jerked up in the air and suddenly, I was free from the wire's constricting volts. I was free.

I took the time to kick his head as hard as I could, swinging my body downwards to gain momentum and landing on the ground in a roll and springing up to face the other two idiots, my feet finding ground as my teeth bared viciously. Before the other two paladins even knew what hit them, I was in their midst, adrenaline pumping through my veins. They both tried to pull out their tasers, but I was far too close for them to use them, kicking, punching, biting. I was ferocious.

My hand had just grazed one of the tasers when I got an idea. Twisting the nice paladin's arm, I deftly grabbed the taser as I cracked his wrist and then shot back out of his reach, almost as though we were dancing a spicy tango. Before he could advance again, I had pointed the taser at him and pressed a red button that I thought looked rather magical. Nothing happened. He smirked. I jammed my thumb onto the red button as hard as I could and voila, the paladin was twitching on the ground, thousands of volts running through him.

I knew the red button was magical.

I made short work of the remaining paladin and soon enough, he had joined his compatriot in seizure-like spasms.

But I felt a presence behind me. It wasn't over.

My back was to them and the element of speed was needed, but I turned around slowly all the same. Perhaps I had a flair for the dramatic in my soul or perhaps I simply didn't care enough about another paladin to turn around quickly. Perhaps I already knew that I had taken down three paladins already and I could therefore very easily take down another.

But it wasn't a paladin that stood behind me, approximately twenty feet away, staring at me with dark eyes that were usually an electric blue.

I knew he was angry but I didn't bother thinking of why. Perhaps because I had gone ahead and done the mission because of my pride or perhaps because the recruits had run away and left the recovering previously-bedridden boss-lady to fend for herself.

Either way.

I wasn't prepared for him. I didn't expect the strides he took towards me, his legs eating the distance with a few jumps in for good measure. His steps were hurried, erratic, and irregular. But I didn't have _time_ to think of why.

Before I could say anything, move, or even think, he was there in front of me, grabbing my face roughly between his hands and smashing his lips to mine.


	19. Finally

**Chapter 19 - Finally**

There had been a moment in a Walmart janitorial closet somewhere in Paris, Texas, when I wondered what it would be like for the world to go black, and the only thing reminding me that I even existed to be the feeling of his arms around me and his lips numbing mine.

But when it happened in a remote, dirty alley in Cairo - when his lips crashed to mine and my eyes stared at him in shock as his eyelids flickered shut for a single moment and then shot open as though he'd just realized what he was doing - I was numb. In shock. Simply did not know what was going on. Why he was doing this. And the look in his eyes told me he did not know either.

We stayed, staring into each others' eyes for what felt like an eternity but was really only a split second. Then his eyes changed, morphing into an expression that I had never seen before, with a word echoing somewhere in his gaze.

_Finally,_ his eyes said. _Finally._

Finally, he was acting on his desire, if only for a moment. Finally, he was letting go, if only for a moment. Finally, he was letting himself have a moment of weakness, if only for a moment.

He closed his eyes and moved his lips against mine once more, renewing his kiss, renewing his offer. Reminding me that he was here and he had been here and I needed to decide just as he had decided. If only for a moment. He was holding back, waiting for my lips to caress his in return, for me to reciprocate what he was feeling.

There was a sudden rush of blood through my entire body as my brain finally realized what was happening and my stomach gave the strangest lurch that felt like happiness in disguise. My skin burned where he touched me as my eyes slid closed, my lips moved against his, and the same word echoing through his eyes jolted through my mind as well.

_Finally._

I could feel his lips move upwards into one of those cocky smiles of his before he gently pushed me backwards until my back leaned against one of the scratchy brick walls that made up the alley. His arms pulled my body flush against his and I could feel his heart pumping, through his shirt, through his worn leather jacket, through his tough exterior.

Then he kissed me.

Really, truly kissed me.

He tasted of leather. Of fire. Of the woods. Of long nights under the stars. Of dragons, of swords, of battles, of scars. He tasted of stone and all things strong and yet so warm to the point of hot to the point of burning to the point of searing heat. He was the strongest liquor I had ever tasted and the fight alone of his lips and tongue were addictive to the touch, taste, feel.

It was my turn to smile.

He was more than I had thought. More than he had let himself be. He was more than he could handle.

Perhaps he realized I had realized this, as his arms tightened and his kiss turned vicious, as though he wanted to keep the truth from me for as long as possible. He was telling me, with his mouth, without words, with his tongue, without syllables, with his arms, without emphasizing gestures, that this was all he had to offer me. He had chosen to ignore what else he could be. Chosen.

And I chose to decide that what he gave me was all that I was going to take.

"Don't do that again," he whispered raggedly as soon as our lips parted, our breath fanning across each other's face as we clung to each other, shocked by the discoveries we had made in only a few moments. "Don't do that ever again."

"Don't do what?" I asked, a smirk crossing my face, leaving a hint of playfulness trailing behind in its path. "Don't kiss you?"

I swear, he nearly growled. Before I could make a snide comment about actually _being _a snarling griffin instead of just being _named_ after one, his lips were pressed to mine once more and I was silenced before I could make noise.

But why shouldn't I do it again? Why _shouldn't _I risk my life in a fight against paladins? Why _shouldn't _I fight against odds that almost anyone else in the world would not be able to defeat? Why shouldn't I?

So even though the taste of his lips was the strongest of whiskeys and I was in that grey area between drunk and sober, that stage where all you know is you need more, I pushed away from him. When he looked at me with confusion in his eyes, the only reason I could think of was that I had done it because I could. Because I was in control of my actions. Because I had taken care of myself for all of the years of my life, and no one, no one was going to tell me what to do or what not to do, even if he had not even known what he was saying.

Looking into his confused face for a single second, noticing how cherry red and near-bruised his lips were, I felt the stirrings of longing in the pit of my stomach. Longing to go back to those lips and kiss them once more. Longing to lose myself in his arms, pressed up against a building that I had never seen before, in an alley I had been in once upon a time, many years before. Longing to forget all of my instincts and to just memorize the feel of him.

But I could not.

So I let myself place restrictions on my actions before I let him place guidelines on my life - and I placed a hand on his cheek and made myself look him in the eye and I told him, "We need to get back."

There was greater confusion than ever in his eyes, but I could not stop myself, would not stop myself, would not rethink my actions.

So even though that night, my ears would crane for the sound of his footsteps outside my door or beside my bed, and even though they would never find the noise they would look for that night or for nights to come, my legs carried me away from him, even though he stared after me.


	20. Needing

A/N: To **you can try but you will fail**: no. The story is definitely not complete. :)

I'm still alive. Don't kill me?

**Chapter 20 – Needing**

I was lounging on the couch when my first headache began. I remember it only because I felt the crackle of electricity from the paladin's oversized taser, but yet there were no paladins around and I was safe within my own headquarters.

Griffin had just walked past. I had watched him go without a word and he had not even glanced at me, even though I knew he knew I was there. And I specifically remember thinking that it was a bloody shame what I had done but that there was nothing else to be done because I had done it for the both of us and -

But then it started. Quietly at first, throbbing against the weakness of my temple, then becoming a steady drumbeat that accompanied the comparatively tin-tin sound of my heart pumping. It grew worse and worse and worse and worse as it crawled into my lungs and nested there, painting my every breath and then climbing up the stairwells of my defenses and into the fortress of my mind -

"Are you alright?"

I found myself curled in a fetal position, quivering on the couch, shivering without breath, lungs burning from lack of oxygen.

But the pain had gone.

Vanished.

Disappeared into thin air.

I uncurled slowly, cautiously breathing in again. Nothing. Not even a twinge.

There was a man standing before me, his form lean and tall. His face was concerned and his deep voice asked again if I was alright.

"No, Sherlock, I was just dreaming about butterflies while my head exploded."

He hesitated for a moment, obviously wondering whether to take me seriously or to decide I was being facetious or to just leave me alone to my own devises of insanity.

Evidently, he decided that I was being stupid and I really was hurting, since he sat on the arm of the couch and started talking about the possible remedies. As he rambled, I mused to myself that this was definitely a breach of the personal boundaries I had enforced with my minions. But his voice was deep and rich and soothing and the pain was gone...

And I figured that hey. I could let someone slide just this once. Because I was gracious.

But I knew it was because of his voice. Quiet, dark, sensible. I had not heard a voice like that since...

"Are you a pre-med?" I asked him, interrupting his train of thought.

He blinked owlishly at me for a moment, emphasizing his dark blue eyes, which were framed with the longest, thickest black eyelashes I'd ever seen.

"Yeah," he finally admitted. "How'd you know?"

"I know my people types. Generally, young men droning on about brain tumors aren't non-pre-med students."

He flushed, coloring his cheeks with the lightest touch of pink rouge.

But damn. He looked like a girl.

A handsome girl, but a girl nonetheless.

"You probably don't remember me." He said slowly. "But I'm Daniel. I was one of the first ones you rescued."

A distinct image flashed through my mind: Daniel awkwardly having to face a giggling Stacy and a befuddled Steve who had to watch as his newfound romantic interest rubbed herself up on a man she had met three seconds before.

"Ah, yes, you." _You._ "I remember your... Welcoming party."

The look on his face was enough and I snorted with laughter. Just in time for Griffin to see it when he walked past again. And this time, he did look.

**...**

The coughing started soon after that. A few weeks, I believe. At first it was nothing, a little _hrum-hrum_ in my throat that no one noticed. Hell, I barely even noticed it. But then one day, I woke up and could barely breathe through my constricted lungs.

"Fuck, you sound like a dying car."

"And I suppose you think you sound like a Ferrari," I growled, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and glaring at him in hostility.

"A Thunderbird, actually," he smiled that shit-eating, cocky grin and folded his arms across his chest.

"Thunder-full-of-shit if you ask me." I mumbled before something in my throat caught and I turned back to the toilet I had been hunched over and struggled to control the quivering of my body as my lungs choked so violently that tears rose in my eyes and trickled down my cheeks as snot dripped into the toilet.

He was silent, ceasing his jokes, or perhaps holding them back to release at another time. But, all the same, his feet approached and he knelt beside me and his hands gathered my bedraggled hair and held it behind my neck. As my coughs finally subsided and various liquids from my body trickled into the toilet bowl, I held still just to feel his breath whisk across my neck and his surprisingly gentle thumbs soothe away at my sore neck.

I was ashamed. Ashamed that I needed his help, ashamed that I was too strong to ask for it, ashamed that he offered it without question. I was ashamed that I was so weak in the first place.

"I think they did something to me."

"I thought you were this bitchy naturally."

"Bastard."

A smile tugged at his lips as his fingers twisted through the ends of my hair idly.

"There've been rumors going around the camp that the fuckers were developing a virus to implant in a few Jumpers to test what it would do to them." He said quietly, pulling me back into him when I stiffened. "I think they're trying to wipe us out once and for all."

"The virus couldn't be contagious, though. It _couldn't_ be. Their resources are so limited, they could not concoct a virus by themselves and make it compact enough to inject. And what would the point be of injecting it into one person? A virus-"

"There's another rumor that they've been doing research on mind control implantation."

Oh, shit.

"But if... If they knew how to control our minds, we would lose ourselves and begin fighting amongst ourselves and spread the virus without them having to do anything else... That's impossible!"

"Andy. Shit, we rob banks without cracking the safes, we go through doors without touching the handles, and we can go from Egypt to Japan in the span of two seconds - and you're saying something is impossible?"

"...Damn fucker, you always have to be right?"

"Only every day that ends with a Y."

"...Bastard."

It only got worse. And Griffin, while he never hovered, always seemed to know exactly when something was wrong. One day, he spooned a mixture down my throat, saying that "It's an old recipe my mom used to make for my sister when she had the coughs. And don't whine like a fucking baby." It helped for a little while. But one day, there came a cough that the concoction could not touch. And it was that day that Griffin looked in my eyes and told me that he was going to make sure I got better because, as he put it, "there's no damn way you're dying and leaving me in charge of this group of imbeciles."

His eyes, however, held a promise that was sincere, despite the circumstantial reason his words portrayed.

I almost hated him for making me hope.

But all the same, I kept coughing and he kept tossing that slimy liquid down my throat because we didn't know if it would work, but hell, we didn't know if it wouldn't work either, and that was unfortunately good enough for Griffin. Sometimes I think he liked seeing me scrunch my face in disgust when I swallowed the vile concoction. He certainly found it amusing enough to want to see it more often, since he tossed it down my throat more and more frequently.

And then came the weakness. It was like my bones were soft clay. It took all of my strength to get through training every day, but after a few times of falling asleep on my bed in exhaustion and waking up with a blanket thrown over my body - my entire body, including my face - Griffin put an end to my training duties. I wasn't sure whether to punch him or hug him when he made me stay inside and make myself some tea instead.

Fucking tea.

On top of all of that, the headaches came back every now and then. It was infrequent, but it was enough to make me wish I had never survived the hell the paladins had put me through.

The odd thing was that whenever I was struggling - whenever I _needed_ Griffin - Daniel was always around. Always. Casually observing me, ignoring me, or offering assistance. He was _always_ there.

One day, about two weeks after the coughing had started, I was lying on the couch, coughing up what felt like my kidneys, and there was a shuddering pain ripping through my body from the hacking coughs that crawled their way out of my lungs. And I looked up and Daniel was staring at me curiously, his head cocked to the side, his brow furrowed.

"What the hell you staring at?" I croaked, my bloodshot eyes glaring him down.

"Nothing," he easily replied in his deep, deep voice. Too easily. I hated him for it because his voice was smooth and mine no longer was. "Nothing at all. Just - you exhibit the strangest symptoms."

"Yeah? Why the fuck should I care?"

"Because. If I had a lab, I might have been able to figure out a hypothetical cure."

I stared at him for a few seconds before I launched myself at him, throwing my arms around him and squeezing as hard as I could. If I didn't know better, I'd say I heard a rib crack before my bones turned to putty and I had to return to my position on the couch. He may or may not have doubled over in pain and clutched at his ribs. But right then, I really didn't care. I could be well again. There was a possibility I could be well again and Griffin's conspiracy theories would be done with and over and—

I would get him his lab. If it was the last thing I did, I would get him his lab.

When I told Griffin, his eyes narrowed.

"I don't like it." He said.

"You don't like anything. Fuck, you don't like me. I mean, come on, you must be insane if you don't like _me_."

He shot me a grin that managed to be very unamused.

"Fuck you too, sweetie." He retorted. "But I still don't like it. Why is he offering help _now_? Why not two weeks ago, before I started cooking up that shit-"

"I _told_ you it was shit! And you aren't even the one who had to _drink_ the shit."

"I've had to, okay, and that's good enough." He ran his fingers through his hair and his hands settled on his hips. He looked enough like a worrying mother for me to smirk. But he ignored me and continued on. "Think about this, Em."

My blood froze.

That name-

"What the fuck did you just call me?" My voice was soft. Too soft. Dangerously soft.

"Uhm." He said slowly, stopping all movement as he tried to remember what he had just said. And then it hit him. It hit him so hard, it practically hit him with a jackhammer. "Oh. Fuck. My God, fuck, I'm sorry-"

He had suddenly remembered that I had a past too and that my fucking brother had died and that he, rest his soul, had hardly been the most original bastard the world had ever seen.

But my brother's nickname for me had just fallen out of Griffin's mouth and he had completely forgotten. About everything. About anything. He had simply... forgotten.

But fuck if I was going to throw a tantrum. I didn't even have enough strength to be a bitch anymore.

Life sucked.

"Forget it. It's okay. Just don't let the others hear you calling me that, okay?"

"Yeah. Sure." He eyed me uncertainly, as though he was not entirely sure that he was going to live. "Anyway. Uhm. Come on, think about this. Why is he offering his help now and not two weeks ago when this all started? It's... It's fucking _weird_."

"Yeah." I said slowly, trying to shake the shock of what had just happened from my mind. "What do you suppose we should do about it, though? Griff, this might be my only chance to get better-"

"Yeah, but I don't trust him."

"What, and we've been going by _your_ instinct this entire time?" I asked him, raising my eyebrows and waiting for him to challenge me and say that we had. "Because the first time I met you, when I had just saved your ass from an electrical tower, you attacked me. And obviously, your instinct must have been rather rusty at the point, since I don't know of anyone that could actually, consciously _want_ to attack _this_." I waved to a general vicinity that included my face, shoulders, and upper chest. "I mean. You were clearly delusional."

Griffin, instead of getting mad as I thought he would, smirked and stepped closer, hovering over me in a way that made me thought of dark, dangerous things. Like a warm janitor closet with his body on mine. Like the black behind my eyelids that I melted into whenever I remembered the taste of his kiss. Like the thought that maybe it would be okay to sample those lips one more time. And then again. And again. And again. And again. And an eternity of "and again"s.

But he didn't know what I was thinking when he opened his mouth and replied: "I'm pretty sure I wasn't."

Wasn't what? What had we been talking about? ... Oh. He was saying he wasn't delusional. And I searched my mind for a witty retort to save myself some face, but I came up blank and empty with hardly so much as a flick of my tongue to nervously wet my lips.

And that wasn't such a good idea. Or maybe it was. Because his eyes drew to my lips in a way that promised me it would not be such a bad thing to find my way into his arms once more and then again and again and again. And his face was just beginning to near mine and I swear I thought I was dead because my heart had stopped beating but my eyelids were flickering and that darkness was descending on me-

"So, are you guys ready for the raid on Thursday?"

It was Daniel.

I felt the loss of Griffin's warmth as soon as he whirled from me with a single silent, hissed word that I think happened to be an expletive.

And I think that moment was the first moment I truly wanted to rip Daniel's head clean from his shoulders.


	21. The Wee Hours of the Morning

**A/N; **Hola. I've been working on my book. Yes, I'm writing a book. Yes, I'm excited. The dream of my life is to be published before I graduate high school. But I guess we'll see. Que sera sera. Either way, I'm super excited about my book, although I think my best friend might be even more excited than I am. :) She's crazy awesome.

Anywho! Got a lot of stuff going on currently. I feel like I've been living weekend to weekend lately because I've been out of town every weekend this last month and then I have to rush back to make it to school and get all my assignments in and ughhhh. I'm tired. But who cares? I'm just warning you that I might not be able to update for a while. Kind of like that ONE time that I took three months to update... Haha. That was my bad, guys, but I was concentrating rather singlemindedly on my book and all the crazy stuff that's been going on recently. But here's a chapter! You might want to read the last chapter before you read this one and refresh yourself on what's been going on. I had to, honestly. Which, of course, made me feel like the worst updater ever. Buuuuuuut. Sorry. :(

And if you notice the writing style shifting towards the middle of the chapter... Blame it on my book. And Hemingway. And my English teacher. I'm trying to better my writing and get better grades on my papers and I'm not sure whether or not my new style is better or worse than my old one, but I think I like writing even better than I used to, so that's always a good thing.

Alsooo, this chapter I have a song. I was on the way back to Georgia from Kentucky and I had just finished this chapter and I was listening to music on my phone and my Mumford selection was on shuffle and this song came on and the lyrics were just _so _perfect. So I'm using it.

But, anywho! Read the chapter before or don't, your choice. I suppose you don't really need to. Just know that Em is SICKKK and Griffin cares and Daniel's very "helpful."

This is the end of the very long and annoying Author's Note. Woot.

Enjoy the chapter! Read & Review, please! I love hearing back from you guys!

**Chapter 21 - The Wee Hours of the Morning**

She stole my heart and made me sing

She tore me limb from limb

I did not think I could love

Or be loved that way again.

How glad I was to be myself

And use my heart once more.

_The Banjolin Song._ **Mumford & Sons.**

The raid on Thursday was simply that, a raid. Now that we knew what the paladins were up to, we had set about trying to figure out how much they knew. So, every now and then, when they weren't expecting it, we snuck in and hijacked their systems. Of course, Griffin tried to be an ass and told me I couldn't go, but I persuasively swayed him to my side of the argument.

_Very_ persuasively.

"I don't care what you say: you're. Not. Going. Anywhere."

"Oh, like you could stop me if you wanted to."

"I could."

"Could not."

"Could so."

"Could not."

"Could so."

"You're being childish." I retorted, narrowing my eyes at him and trying my hardest to not start coughing. "You just don't want me to go."

"Oh, Jesus, am I that obvious?" He stared at me as if he'd expected more brains out of me. I was slightly offended: he usually reserved that stare for Stacy.

"Well. You're... Quite subtle when you want to be..."

It seems that when you're trying to _not_ cough, that's when your body decides it needs to cough.

So I had Griffin leveling his Stacy Stare at me and I had my face turning purple from trying not to have an apoplexy by not coughing.

Not my best day ever.

And who the hell was I kidding? Griffin, subtle? Poor choice of words on my part.

"Me, subtle." He scoffed. "Bloody hell. You can't even think straight anymore, you're so sick."

"Come on, Griff. It's not _that_ bad."

"You're a fucking nincompoop! Did you know that? Did you? Because you are! 'Not that bad,' my ass - you're shivering your fucking toes off from a fever, you're almost falling over with weakness, you're coughing up a lung, you're blabbering gibberish about how I'm subtle - _me, subtle?_ - and you're telling me it's '_not that bad_?' I always knew you were psycho!"

"Watch it with the insults! And you're exaggerating!"

Coughcoughcough-

"Thank you for proving my point," he growled, but he didn't look quite as pissed as I thought he should have. I had just contradicted him (even though he was mostly right) and he was barely even mad.

It didn't feel right.

Like he was holding back or something.

... Awh, shit, no.

If he was holding back, he either a) didn't think I could handle him at full strength, b) he was worried enough to try to make it easier enough on me when I was sick, or c) both, all of which meant he cared.

I found I couldn't really bring myself to care whether or not he cared. Well, actually. At this point, I was beginning to think that I would care only if he _didn't_ care.

This was a complicated web. No wonder guys could never figure girls out, if their heads were always so confused.

"-And now you're staring into space. Shit, what is it with bloody women? Confusing, irritating-"

"Nice to know you care, Griffypoo." I smiled and fluttered my eyelashes besottedly at him, trying to recollect my wits from where I had left them strewn around my confusing and irritating bloody woman brain. "Next thing you know, you'll be confessing your undying love for me."

Griffin grinned. I didn't think I'd ever seen him grin. It was kind of cute. And it really scared me. Because when was Griffin ever _cute_?

"Sorry to disappoint, Tiger, but I don't even care enough about you to lie and _say_ I love you, let alone mean it."

Well, there went my worries about him caring about me or holding back. But I felt a twinge. Like I cared that he didn't care because I cared but he didn't care because he thought I didn't care because I hadn't cared-

OH MY GOD.

"-Staring off into space again. Might as well name you E.T., not Tiger. Next thing you know, you'll be dyeing your skin blue with Kool Aid and claiming to be an Avatar person thingummy-"

"Just leave," I told him, staring at him with what felt like a reproduction of his Stacy Stare. "I don't want to have to deal with your hormones anymore. And they're called the Na'Vi."

"Asshole," he snorted.

"Bitch," I snorted.

"Bye, honey." He smirked at me one last time. "Don't wait up for me." Then he was gone.

Damn him for absorbing me into my never ending thoughts and making me forget that I had been convincing him I was well enough to go-

Or, rather, _attempting_ to convince him I was well enough to go.

Because he wouldn't let me go.

Because he cared.

Oh, fuck.

He came back in the wee hours of the morning, dragging behind him a team of complaining, partially drunk Jumpers. He was bright and happy and slightly tipsy where they were sleepy and lousy but loud and drunk. I knew this because as soon as he walked in, he flopped onto my bed next to me where I had been pretending to be asleep in case anyone drunk made the mistake of jumping to my room instead of theirs.

"Are you going to make it a practice to disrupt my beauty sleep?"

"Are you going to make it a practice to pretend to be asleep like you're twelve years old?"

"Well. It's lucky for you that I was only pretending. Because if you'd woke me up-"

"Yeahyeah shit this shit that. Do you want to hear about it or not?"

"About what?"

"The raid."

"Are you alive?"

"No, I'm talking to you from the afterlife."

"Did the others survive?"

"No, they're here with me. They say hi."

"If you're dead... And so are the others... Then I'm good. So long as you're dead."

I heard him chuckle.

"Did you just laugh?"

"Yes. So the fuck what?"

"Who are you and what have you done to Griffin O'Connor?"

"It's not my fault you're funny. God. Reign in your jokes a little if you don't want me to laugh."

"It's not my fault I'm funny. God. Reign in your laughter if you don't want me to tell jokes."

"You're unreasonable," he said, but it didn't really sound like a bad thing when it came from his lips.

"You're idiotic."

"You're perfect."

"You're lying."

"Yes, I am."

"Idiotic bitch," I retorted.

"Unreasonable asshole," he replied quickly.

"What a pair we make," I murmured into the darkness without thinking and he stirred next to me and I felt the bed shift as he raised himself to one elbow. I felt the heat of his body along my side and I suddenly felt cold, chilled, freezing.

Maybe that was when I realized I needed him.

No one had given me what he had. No one had accepted me and asked for nothing more and returned my anger blow for blow. No one had made me want to let them stay.

I couldn't say that I loved him because, honestly, love had never really meant anything to me. Andy had been the only person I had ever loved in my entire life and then when he was gone, no one else even seemed worthy of that word because it was almost sacred to me: I had given it to Andy and no one else so no one else could have it if he couldn't. So I didn't love Griffin. I only needed him. And I think that was all I could have handled at that point.

I heard him open his mouth to speak but abruptly my breath caught and I erupted into a spasm of coughing that seemed to stretch on for an eternity before it finally subsided and I relaxed back into the bed. Somehow, he had ended up holding me, though he quickly let me go as soon as I seemed to be done.

I missed his warmth then. I told myself it was because I was sick and cold and he was well and warm. And besides. I didn't much like being touched anyway.

But I knew it wasn't just that. I wasn't as stupid as I tried to let myself be: I couldn't fool myself.

I knew I especially wasn't fooling mysf because, when his fingers touched my arm and found the ends of my hair and wove themselves in a sort of elaborate tapestry through my strands, I found I didn't mind being touched so much at all.

I found I had a burning question to ask that wouldn't stay beneath my tongue and it slipped out into the air between us like a persistent child escaping their restraints.

"Do you remember love?"

He was quiet. Then: "Yes."

Then I wondered if everyone's definition of love was the same and quickly came to the conclusion that, if it was, I must have been stone hearted, what with everyone else loving as freely as they did contrasted with my utter lack of commitment. I somehow wished to be one of them: I wished to be free to pretend to be naive and think someone would be there for me forever and promise I would be there for them as well.

I wanted to love again. I wanted a false sense of security again. Call me foolish, what with the lifestyle I lived, but I wanted to feel safe in someone's words, in someone's arms again.

"I remember Andy. And that's it."

"I remember Tessie."

"Tessie?"

"Yeah."

Silence. I didn't press. He was a private person, as was I. If he wanted to say something, he would. He didn't need to be prodded or asked. He would tell me if I was supposed to know. I understood this about him, perhaps better than most other people would.

"She was my little sister."

Was.

"She died when they raided my house. I had only jumped once. I was six. She was three. She was old enough to scream."

He almost seemed to be growing colder, as though he were shrinking in on himself. I only wanted him to be warm again and I moved closer, barely touching him but silently offering whatever warmth he could gather from my presence and his arm slid across my waist. Not to pull me closer but almost to ascertain that I was really there and I wasn't a dream.

I couldn't offer any words. I knew as well as anyone that there weren't any words that would help him right then. There simply weren't any words.

I didn't know what to do, though. No one had ever done anything to me to make me feel better and therefore I had to conclude that there was really nothing to do. So I lay there and I waited for him to be okay because I needed him to be okay.

But he wasn't.

"She used to get these scrapes. Huge things. She never even cried about them. She was proud. She always asked me if she was a big girl because she could handle pain. I loved her."

He cried then. Not as the Griffin I knew but as the little boy who had lost his playmate and his baby sister and his best friend. Without ceremony, without heaving sobs, just as tears trickling down his cheeks, and I realized that it must have been the first time he'd cried over her. He hadn't when she'd died. He'd been too busy focusing on surviving and he'd never had time to truly mourn, only ever to be angry.

Maybe that was when I realized that he needed me too. Not necessarily in the same way that I needed him and maybe not as much, but he needed me nonetheless and if I hadn't been there, he would have missed me. And he would never have said it then and I decided then that he would never have to, though one day he might decide to, however unlikely.

So when his tears ended and he lay quiet, I allowed my arms to encircle him and my body to find his and I let my words coat him in peace as I described my own brother, though my tears never came because my brother was my one good memory and I had decided not to cry over something so precious.

I told him about the time we had been playing hide and seek and my brother had locked himself in my closet and stayed in there for eight hours before someone found him. I told him about my brother's unnatural obsession with fire and how he claimed it was the most spiritual thing he'd ever seen because it died and came back to life seemingly at will.

I told him about the time when he was trying to make me feel better about our new den - which was a dump - and so he painted an entire room a bright orange before he tripped on a couch leg and faceplanted against the wall and got orange paint smeared on an entire cheek and half his nose and chin. He was still picking orange flakes out of his eyebrows weeks later.

But I never told him how he died. And I never told him anything about myself.

Griffin was silent the entire time. I think he was happy to be distracted even though telling him such stories about Andy was entirely pointless. And then my words finally blurred together and I couldn't talk anymore around the lump in my throat. And I missed him. I missed my brother. I missed my best friend. I missed him so fucking damn shit much. There was a hole in my chest where he'd used to be and no one had even come close to filling it again.

Griffin didn't try: he only gathered me closer and let me use him as a comfort, his arm tighter around my waist. I don't know when I started crying and I don't know when I stopped. I only know that when I awoke in the morning to my limbs tangled around Griffin's and to his still sleepful face relaxed without the usual angry line between his eyebrows, I knew it had all been worth it to see him in a moment of peace.

It was highly unlikely that such an event would have happened under any other circumstances. If I had not been sick, weak, tired - I would never have said the things that I did or allowed myself to open up. If he hadn't been exhausted from weeks of training and taking care of me (not to mention the fact that he was probably slightly tipsy), he never would have acted so out of character.

But we did. And I think that was who we were: only two lonely, hurting people who didn't have anyone left. We just never showed anyone because you don't show someone a weakness unless you know they won't exploit it. I was given a sense of security by Tessie. He was given a sense of security by alcohol and then by Andy.

I learned that night that it was impossible to be strong forever. Somehow, I awoke and I saw his face and I knew then that there were many different facets to a personality and they couldn't all be strong.

You couldn't always be strong. You'd break from exhaustion someday, somehow, someway. You'd break. You'd simply break.


	22. Hunger & Breath

**A/N;** So. I don't know who actually reads the author notes. I do. But, either way. Just wanted to let you guys know that if you've read, seen, heard of, or even have no idea what The Hobbit is, you should check out my latest story. It's called _The Misadventures of a Dwarven Female_. I think it's going to be pretty beastly and I'm really excited about it. So, please, give it a chance, read the ONE chapter I have (1,000 words, won't take you very long) and send me a review because I'm really excited about it. It WILL be updated VERY frequently, so if my constant lack of updating is something that would keep you away from it, don't let it. It will be annoying how frequently updated this story is. Alright? Pleeeeease do me this favor! Please!

Oh. And review this chapter too. :) We're reaching something. I can't tell you what yet, but it's coming!

(Oh. And apologies for the shift in writing. Again. Blame it (again) on Hemingway.)

…

**Chapter 22 – Hunger & Breath**

Then I started to lose my hunger. Bit by bit until it was all gone, my craving simply left. For food, for company (or, what little I had once had), for the physicality of fighting: it just left. Slowly but gradually, I was becoming a potato. And that discomforted me. So much so that I was rather angry about it all.

I _may _or may not have snapped at a few of the minions who ate a pack of Nutter Butters...

_My_ Nutter Butters.

I might not have been hungry, but they were still mine.

And the same went for Griffin O'Connor.

There was a woman. A girl, really. Her name was Courtney and she seemed to have barely reached puberty. But, as it was, she had seemed to become rather obsessive over Griffin, following him around like a lost puppy and making an altogether nuisance of herself. Griffin tolerated her, which was more than he did most of the others, and that made me... cranky. For some odd reason, I had always thought that I was the _only _one he could tolerate.

_Obviously_ not.

Daniel had started to follow _her_ around. I had quite given up on the lot of them except for when Griffin came into my bedroom when I lay awake in the night and flopped onto the opposite side of the bed, lying facing away from me.

The first time, I had asked him what he was doing. His only response was that I had a memory foam mattress (which he had stolen for me) and I was daft if I thought he was going to sleep on his cardboard mattress.

"Well," I had said, "you could always jump to a mattress store and have a bed all to yourself."

He had pretended to be asleep. I had left it alone.

Daniel had taken to lecturing me about my illness, telling me where the disease originated from and how it could be cured if _this_ toxin was decreased and _this_ hormone took over and _this_ bodily function—

He was a raving lunatic, as far as I could tell. Perhaps if I'd been working on my doctorate in something medicinal, I could have been jotting down notes. But I wasn't and knowing the information wouldn't do me one ounce of good, no matter how hard I listened or how earnestly I tried to understand what the hell Daniel was talking about. So I didn't even listen, didn't even try: I tuned him out as efficiently as a paladin would tune out a Jumper's pleas for mercy. And, oddly enough, that would soon come into play.

But life started to get worse - if you could call it life. The only time I felt alive was at night, with Griffin's breathing coming from right next to me and my ears focused into the blackness of the night. That was the only time I could feel normal again. Inbetween the bouts of sickness, I was allowed to pretend that everything was okay. During the day, I was forced to confront the body that was slowly dissolving in front of my eyes. The fat and muscle of my body simply melted off. I became gaunt again, even though I had only just gained back some of the weight I had already lost from my time with the paladins. But this time it got even worse.

The lectures got more intensive as Daniel started putting together his hypothesis. He seemed oddly passionate about it. Whenever he wasn't chasing Courtney's tail, that is. Whenever he remembered himself.

I was struggling with things I didn't have any control over.

And so one night, when Griffin crawled into the bed next to me and turned to me to have our customary nightly lying-about-how-everything-was-fine session, I broke.

There weren't any tears. I could feel my frail body shuddering. I couldn't take anymore. My skin itched with it all. The hopelessness. The lies. The certainty I had been facing that I wouldn't ever be the same again. The lectures.

There was something inside of me that simply itched to be set free and for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. I clawed at my skin to break it free. I thought that it was just there, just under the tissue maybe—

My body was a cage and I was the prisoner and I was kept in iron bars of weakness and fragility and terror. I was kept from the air as surely as ever and I found that suddenly I could not breathe—

The air wasn't there. I drew breath after breath, but the air wasn't there. My lungs itched. I needed the air. Needed. Scrabbled. Clawed. Fought. Struggled. Screamed. Constricted. Bound. Drawing. Needing. Nothing.

And then, abruptly, I knew what I was fighting. I wasn't fighting the paladins or the sickness that they had planted in my body or my emotions that left me feeling as though I were too weak to survive. I wasn't fighting them. I was fighting myself. Because I wanted to give in. My body was betraying me and losing the fight. I was fighting to keep breathing, even though my lungs were closing on me. I was fighting to swallow, even though my throat had stopped working. I was fighting to reach up and soothe Griffin, even though he was shaking me by the shoulders in panic.

My breaths came irregular and gasping, bubbling in with rasps of sobs and oh how it was to lose my mind when my skin turned bloody and the marks grew desperate—

There was no greater terror than the terror I felt that night. I was losing my mind and falling from control and a doubt was growing in my mind: a whisper, poisonous and treacherous. _What's it all for? You'll die. You'll die. You'll die eventually anyway. You'll die. Just give in. Give in. Give in. Give in._

The toughest enemy is yourself.

I came to myself slowly. Griffin was cradling my head in his hands. When I drew a shuddering but steady breath, he held me tighter than I had ever been held before and I thought he would never let me go.

But he only held the pieces of me. Because I had just broken. And if thugs continued, I would only shatter and crack and shudder until there was nothing left of me but specks that would slip and slide through his fingers as easily as sand. And when that happened, I would cease to exist.

Daniel worked ever harder. Griffin growled like he had in the mornings when I had first met him, but now he never stopped growling. The Jumpers fought and trained and ran their miles ever more fervently. Perhaps my death would be the spurring of them all. I had stopped hoping to stay alive. I knew I would die. It was only a matter of how many enemies I could bring down with me.

I called more raids. We gathered information as quickly as we could. Griffin had lit afire. He was burning alive just as I was. He knew that if I crumbled, he would be next.

Then, one day, a raid came back with nothing but a name and a date: Andy Collins. Nine days ago.

My brother had been dead for five years. His flesh had rotted from his bone by now. It was only a ploy to make me fight even more thoughts and doubts and delusions. It was only a fake.

Oh, Andy. If only I'd known.


	23. Strength & Weakness

**Chapter 23 – Strength & Weakness**

Griffin asked me one morning what had happened. I knew without asking that he meant what had happened with Andy. I opened my mouth to answer, but was overtaken by a coughing fit instead. And when I had regained my breath, I told him.

We had been on a trip to South Africa. We had heard of a paladin encampment there and Andy had wanted to check it out. He had always been the more passionate of us two. I had been passive about killing paladins: after all, I had figured that our chances of surviving were better if we simply laid low and hid. But not Andy. He wanted revenge. For what they had done to us, for what they had done to our parents.

It was a trap. They got Andy in a net and he kicked and screamed to create a diversion and give me time so I could get away. The last time I ever saw him was that day, barely still alive, a paladin with white hair and dark skin standing over him with a dagger. I just barely saw the paladin raising the knife and stabbing it in my brother's chest. His last words to me were: "GO, EM, GO!" And I had been forced to go because I refused to let his death be for nothin.

I _couldn't_ let his death be for nothing. So I had carried on the fight. Nothing held meaning for me except revenge: I lived for it.

Griffin was quiet. My voice had gone raw and throaty and I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to cry. It hardly mattered anymore. I was weak already. He had seen me throwing up, he had seen me coughing so violently that I couldn't breathe. He'd seen me crying, had held me (however reluctantly), and he had seen me break down like I never had before. What were a few more tears in comparison? I was weak now. My strength was gone. I was collapsing.

And now, what if Andy was alive? What if I had abandoned him when he needed me most? I was worthless.

And still, Griffin was quiet.

I had lost my sense of pride and, as a result, he had been forced to adjust.

The poor boy.

I reached my hand over to his head and tangled my fingers through his hair without considering whether or not he would be okay with it. I was an invalid. He had no choice but to be nice.

I knew somewhere deep down that I shouldn't be okay with that thought: that once upon a time, I would have resented him if the thought even crossed my mind that he treated me as he did because he pitied me.

I didn't know if he did or not anymore.

Either way, he didn't move. And perhaps I was imagining things, but I thought he might have leaned into my touch.

When he spoke, he was still quiet. Perhaps not silent, but his quiet was nearly the same thing. He didn't expect you to speak back. He just _spoke_.

"I didn't save Tessie."

My fingers stilled in his hair. He continued.

"I don't know if I could have. I think so. Maybe. I – I just _don't know_. But maybe I should have tried. I was just so terrified and I was so young and I could hear her screaming, but I couldn't move and—" He blew out a breath.

He'd been hiding behind a persona for far too long. He had become the person he tried to be, but not really, not truly. He had been crumbling on the inside for so long. When he met someone who had once been strong, who had crumbled in his arms – of course he followed suit. He couldn't help it. He'd been faking strength for _so long—_

I couldn't tell him that it wasn't his fault she was dead. It wasn't my place. I hadn't been there. But I did know what it felt like to question yourself day and night in the silence and the quiet. Could you have saved them? Would you have saved them? Were you really so selfish as to neglect the one person who had loved you unconditionally?

I knew his pain.

So my fingers started stroking through his hair again and, when his breath caught and he stopped moving, I didn't say anything.

There was nothing I _could_ say. He needed to be weak for a few moments, and I could only try to give him the silence he needed so badly.

**...**

Daniel was talking again. What was I to do? I didn't listen. I instead stared vacantly at the air that was somewhere in the vicinity of Daniel's eyes and I pretended to, all while thinking what the next raid would be. It was only when he stepped closer and shook my arm that my eyes truly focused on him with a glare.

_No one_ was allowed to touch me.

Except Griffin. Because I trusted him. And he never touched me at all when we were around the others.

"Daniel." I said slowly. "Why the fuck are you touching me?"

He was barely even phased.

"Sorry, I just had to make sure you were okay. You looked a bit... glazed."

I wasn't a fucking donut.

I told him so. And when he hardly understood, I added: "I'm fine."

"Are you ready?"

Ready?

"For what?"

"To get injected."

_What?_

At my look of sharp suspicion and confusion, he sighed (with an annoying amount of patience. I wasn't a fucking _child_ either.)

"You really weren't listening at all, were you?"

He _expected_ me to?!

He sighed again, still infuriatingly patient.

"I think the cure's ready. Are you ready for the injection?"

Hell yes.

"Come on, then."

He was a little too eager. I was the one getting cured, not him – why was he so excited?

I turned to find Griffin, but he was right there, standing behind me, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"And you _think_ you've developed the cure?" He asked.

With his neverending patience, Daniel replied that _yes_, he thought he had found it and he was pretty damn sure, as he had tested several rats, though he failed to mention where he'd gotten them.

Griffin's eyes narrowed even further and then his hand was on my elbow, leading me away.

What the hell had happened to not touching me when we were around others?

"I don't like it, Em. He took only a few weeks when something like this generally takes _years_. I don't trust him."

"I know," I said. "I don't like it either. But, Griff—" My hand caught his arm as he turned from me and he was forced to face me again. "This might be my only chance."

"I know, Em. I know." He said quietly, and we stared at each other for a moment. I wanted him to tell me that he wouldn't let me go through with it, that he would stand up for my well-being when I was too weak to resist the temptation of a cure because damn it all, the cure could be a dud and I could die because of it. I would hate him for forcing me to remember the dangers. But perhaps it would be for the best.

But then again – to be _healthy_ again! To beat the odds and live when I thought that my death was certain—

Griffin sighed.

"I _can't_ save you, Em. I don't know how."

I knew then what he was saying. He was telling me to take the cure, even if I was the test subject. Because this was my only chance and we both knew that I would probably die without it.

When I turned back to Daniel, my legs were shaking. I'm not sure if it was from weakness or the realization that these could be my final moments of life.

But I looked back at Griffin.

"Are you coming with me?"

There was a flash of something in his eye. His mouth didn't smile and he didn't say anything for a moment.

He was wondering if he was strong enough to watch _me_ die. Because I had been there for him when he crumbled and, even if he hadn't wanted to, he had become attached to me, just as I was to him. He was wondering if losing me would make him crumble all over again.

But when he looked at me again, his face was stone.

"Yes," he said. "I'll come."


	24. The Fly Trap

**Chapter 24 – The Fly Trap**

I felt the needle when it sank into my arm. And I really never liked needles. I suppose that it was a necessary evil and everything, but still. Needles. Ew.

I didn't like the thought of anything being past my skin, truth be told. I was just as physically guarded as I was mentally and emotionally (usually), and needles were a big, resounding no.

And people wondered why I never went to the doctor.

Daniel stepped away and stared at me expectantly. I raised an eyebrow and flopped my freshly injected arm around. Nothing happened. But he was still looking at me like he expected me to spontaneously combust into a pile of goo.

Griffin's mouth twisted into a frown and he folded his arms across his chest, his eyes scanning my face and body for any sign of improvement. I'm not sure what exactly he was looking for: it wasn't like my skeletal frame was about to randomly grow healthier.

But then again, none of really knew what to look for. And he was still looking at me expectantly.

What did he _want_ from me?

"Hey, doctorate boy," I said, flopping my arm around again. "I don't feel any different."

"Well, you should eventually. The serum is strong enough that it will either heal you or..."

"Or what?" Griffin demanded, his frown deepening.

"...or it will prove fatal..." Daniel trailed off rather dramatically. My hands had suddenly started shaking. Shaking. And I didn't think it was because of fear of dying. I literally couldn't stop them from shaking. Most of me was fine, but my hands—

I thought I was overheating, but I wasn't sure. It was kind of icy cold and yet burning hot at the same time. Griffin was arguing with Daniel about how to make me all better, but I was sitting there and staring at my hands and feeling my body start to crumble.

Oh my God. This was it.

I was flushed, but I was shivering so hard that my teeth rattled.

"Make her better!" Griffin screamed at Daniel, slamming his hands down on the counter of Daniel's lab.

"I am _trying_—"

"Try harder."

The weirdest feeling was taking over my body. Like I was coated in slime. I don't know how much time the serum took to take effect. I'm not sure how long Daniel and Griffin argued – or, rather, how long Griffin yelled and Daniel tried to placate him so he wouldn't end up dead when this was all over – but I do know that the serum was doing _something_.

And it felt like something it shouldn't be doing.

I was losing it.

All of it.

"Griff—" I gasped out. And then he was by my side and that's when it goes black.

I don't think that's when I lost consciousness, but that's when my body shut down and I can't remember anything after that.

I rolled in and out of consciousness. I was pretty sure I was going to die. Whenever I woke to find Griffin's face nearby, he looked strained and worried. He probably would look homicidal in a few days. If I died, there would be hell to pay.

It was a little comforting, to be quite honest.

But you don't want to hear about this. I barely even remember the sickness that purged my body of the planted disease. I just remember that I woke up suddenly with the entire desert of sand outside Griffin's laid located somewhere in my throat, and Griffin's voice had just trailed off when I opened my eyes and shot up to a sitting position.

Someone had thoughtfully put a gallon of water next to my bed, which was thoughtful and nice and—

I gulped about half of it down, then turned to Griffin and said: "Can you repeat all that? I completely missed it."

He looked like he'd just had a full emotional breakdown where no one could see him, but now he was just staring at me as if I were a ghost or a zombie or—

Good God. What if I was?

I looked down at my hands. They were steady as I took another swig from the gallon jug. I set it down and experimentally swung my legs over the side. Nope, I was still alive. Not a ghost.

Griffin was still staring at me as though I'd risen from the dead, though. His mouth was hanging open and it was kind of obvious that he had no idea what to say.

"You know, Griff, you should probably shut your mouth: flies could fly in."

I was back, bitches.

**...**

**A/N:** You guys know what this means? No more depressing segments! (Hopefully). Hallelujah! I was beginning I think I'd never get out of there. And my apologies about the whole month and no update thing. I'm currently working on a Hobbit fic, _Misadventures of a Dwarven Woman_, which is a Kili/OC because of his fantastic daddy issues, and I'm also working on a Star Trek fic, _The Rebellious Ones_, which is a Khan/OC, and I hardly need a reason for that because Benedict Cumberbatch's characters are always so fabulously deep and delved. If you guys felt like checking them out, that'd be cool. :) But, anywho, I hope you enjoyed! And I'm definitely looking forward to writing with a sense of humor again. :) Let me know what you think!


	25. Dealing With The Truth

**A/N:** Howdy, y'all. So, this is a weird chapter that will be explained more fully next chapter. Just please don't skim any of it. It's all for a reason, I promise, even the dull parts. This chapter is dedicated to AusisWinds-13 for her random awesomeness and for sending me a random (and very awesome) review. It was absolutely incredible and she inspired me to no end, so I was able to finally write this chapter. I hope y'all enjoy it! :)

**Chapter 25 - Dealing With The Truth**

Well, this was exactly his kind of luck, wasn't it?

She'd died. She'd had no pulse. And so of course he'd sat down and started talking. It didn't really matter at the time what he talked about – he just talked. And, looking back, he had a sinking feeling that he had done some random, sappy douchebag thing and confessed feelings to her still-warm corpse because it was too late to do anything else.

Just like a fucking Disney movie. Like Snow White and shit.

And shit. Shit, shit, shit, _shit_!

She'd _died_. And so _of course_ (also like a sappy douchebag) he'd realized how much his life sucked without her – even though it had sucked even _with_ her, what with the Paladins always trying to kill him thing and whatnot – just as he always did whenever somebody important died.

Not that she was important to him—

Oh, fuck, who was he kidding. Without her, he'd be stuck talking to recently-deceased Paladins about his video games and burning every attempt at food he made for himself. And don't forget stuck with an entire army of Jumpers who didn't know how to fight worth dog shit.

It was kind of okay to start admitting that she was mildly important.

Not that he'd ever tell her.

Never tell her again, anyway, since he was pretty sure that he _had_ confessed it all while he was blabbing to her and begging her not to leave him, like an absolute fucking sappy douchebag _pansy_—

Fuck, he was stupid.

And then of course she'd sat up like a freak show house and told him to repeat all that when he didn't even know what the fuck he'd just said and he was too busy gawking at her – like a fucking _moron_ – to just smirk and tell her that he'd known she wasn't dead and he was just trying to wake her up more quickly by faking emotion—

At least he hadn't cried.

Quite.

But all he had to do was just act normal and pretend like nothing had happened.

If only he could remember what normal was.

**...**

I don't think Griffin quite remembered how to act like I wasn't sick. Either that or I was too busy avoiding him. I kept catching him watching me with a strange look in his eye that was somewhere between confusion and desperation. It was all quite bewildering. And then I'd remember how I'd acted with him while I was sick and I'd look away quickly and then ignore him for a few hours.

It made it easier.

I mean, what the fuck else was I supposed to do? I'd thought I'd been dying and so of course I attached myself to the closest human being and poured my soul out. It was the natural thing to do!

And that was _all_ it was. I refused to consider that – maybe, possibly, _probably_ – my weakness had formed some sort of an attachment between us.

But I was better now! Not sick anymore. So therefore it was all okay and I didn't need him anymore.

But when he stopped coming at night to lay next to me – we weren't talking anyways for some odd reason, so it would have been silent and awkward anyway – I couldn't sleep.

The bastard, leaving me like that.

He ignored me! I tried to talk to him once or twice, but he was so silent and stiff that I just stopped. It seemed obvious that he didn't want to talk to me. All I could think was that something had happened while I was asleep that I didn't know about, or else he just had violent, terrible, bitchy mood swings.

But I tried to focus on training my army (and I use that term loosely). There was very slow improvement. I mean, it was improvement, so that was something, but still. I suppose you can't expect much else from idiots who cry when they're freed from torture and imprisonment.

A few days passed. I got stronger. I felt invincible again, building muscle after being so weak for what seemed so long.

Griffin started talking to me again. It almost felt like he was being cautious. I still wasn't sure why he was acting so strangely. He offered no explanation and, to be completely honest, I remembered Griffin being a jerk most of the time when I wasn't sick. I mean, the dick burned my last bag of popcorn! So why the hell was he being... shy?

Either way, I didn't really need him. Not if he was going to be like that. Even if he did talk to me, it wasn't about anything. It was just about missions and what I wanted done to the paladins if we crossed any (not that he listened to me anyway), if I needed to interrogate them or not, reports on what happened when they got back (and those were always very brief and short, like "It went good. We killed people.") It wasn't Griffin. _He_ wasn't Griffin.

In his absence, Daniel stepped up. He had always been around before, yeah, but that was when Griffin had been there. And now that Griffin wasn't there, Daniel talked. A lot. I even laughed at a few of his jokes to humor him. Shows you how tolerable he was. He really wasn't such a bad guy most of the time. He did prattle a lot, though. He kind of seemed rather nervous, actually. He would study my face sometimes, as if to check that I was okay with him and if I still liked him or not.

What can I say? I was surrounded by idiots.

About four days after I woke up from my supposed deathbed, shit hit the fan.

I was listening to one of Griffin's mission reports – he was still technically my second-in-command, even if we'd had our falling out (even though I still didn't know _why_ we'd had our falling out) – when Daniel came up behind me and put his hand on my waist to get my attention (which, I will admit, irritated me to no end and I _just barely_ restrained myself from brushing him off and only _just barely_ did so because he was the only person who would talk to me these days, since Griffin had stopped, and it wouldn't have been good to alienate him as well) and tell me some stupid story about what had just happened during a training exercise (something about a college kid thinking he was the new Karate Kid with a wise master.) And since Griffin had stopped talking, I assumed he was done and I let Daniel continue.

But, _no_, of course...

"Get your fucking hands off her."

Daniel turned and raised a very bendy, inquisitive, rather cocky eyebrow.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't fucking 'excuse me' me. I said, get. Your. Fucking hands. Off her."

Daniel got his hands off me then, of course. But only to turn and face Griffin fully so he could clench his fists and try to look macho.

"Why don't you make me?"

"Gladly—"

And Griffin lunged.

I jumped between them, like a fucking _idiot_. I mean, what the fuck was I _thinking_?! Griffin was like a charging _bull_.

But I stopped him. And Daniel just stood there and smirked, like I was protecting him or something.

I don't know why, but I almost wanted to do Griffin's work for him and punch Daniel right then and there. Almost.

Griffin the Moron still had to be dealt with, though.

"What the fuck are you doing, Griffin?!"

"I don't trust him!"

"That's _it_?"

"What do you mean, '_that's it'_? That's more than fucking enough!"

"Stop it with the paranoid bullshit, Griffin. This is our own organization and if we can't trust our own members, then who the fuck can we trust?"

"Me stop with the paranoid bullshit? _You_ stop with the blind idiot act! You know _perfectly well_ that he's not trustworthy and you're the one who's letting him touch you!"

"Oh, please! _You're_ the one who—"

"You're fucking _protecting_ him?" He scoffed. "God, Em. I never had _you_ pegged for the stupid type—"

"_Don't fucking call me Em_." I hissed at him, clenching my fists, my muscles contracting with the itch, the urge, the _need_ to hit him.

You know how people say they see red when they're mad? It's just an expression. The truth is that when you're seriously infuriated, all you want to do is bitchslap someone. They become absolutely intolerable to you. You can't stand the sight of them. You could fucking spit at them and still need to beat their body to a bloody pulp before you got it - the absolute _rage_ - out of your system.

And right then, when he called me by my brother's nickname-

There aren't any words. There just aren't any words.

Except maybe fucking goddamn shit of a shitfaced nuisance with a fucking ass made of splintered plank and a bitchy bullshit brain—

It had been okay before. When he had actually taken the time to check on me when I was sick and attempt to make me a home remedy that tasted absolutely _fucking_ awful. But then? Right then, when he hadn't talked to me in days except for a few reports and questions about interrogating paladins for infiltration information - and that had been with a stone face, with his eyes staring out into space or watching someone train instead of looking at me - he had absolutely no right, no fucking right to call me that.

And then he just stared at me. Like I was crazy and polluted and diseased. But not like I had been. No, this disease was apparently disgusting and repulsive, because his mouth twisted into a scowl and his fists balled.

He didn't say anything else. He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving me fuming and needing to punch something over and over and over and over.

Daniel said, "Thanks for that, but I could have handled it," just as his hand landed on my back again. And, at that point, I didn't have Griffin to deal with anymore and I was just way too fed up with dealing with morons to handle being touched, so I turned around and swung without even thinking.

I socked him right on the jaw.

There was a bit of pain from my hand – a lot, actually, but I really didn't care – but it was kind of worth it, seeing Daniel stagger back and nearly land on his ass, shocked as hell.

"Don't touch me." I said (with some small measure of satisfaction), and walked away like nothing had happened.

I was still mad, though. Griffin had some fucking nerve.

I needed to go on a mission. I'd gone too long without beating some paladins up.

**...**

Two nights later, after I had apologized to Daniel for his (swollen purple – I hadn't lost my right hook to the sickness) jaw, I had just gone to bed when there was the jerk and thud of someone jumping into my room. I immediately grabbed the baseball bat that I kept next to my bed (you never know what might happen) and I swung that bat like I was a star baseball player and I was going for the homer that would break some national record.

My victim howled. Unfortunately, it sounded far too much like one of Griffin's war whoops to be anybody else, so I lowered the bat and glared into the darkness.

"You better have a fucking good explanation."

"That fucking _hurt_—"

"Sissy."

"You try getting hit with a baseball bat!"

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm thinking about it, after _that_ hit!"

I smiled. It felt like old times for a split second, back when we would banter (or argue, whatever you want to call it) like an old married couple.

But then I remembered that I was mad at him – so mad that I'd be willing to actually go at him with the bat even after knowing who he was – so I scowled instead and asked, "What do you want, Griffin?"

"Daniel's working for the paladins—"

Oh, fuck it.

"You know what, Griffin, I really don't want to hear it right now."

"But—"

"You've caused far too much drama for one man who has already gone through puberty and gotten rid of all of his feminine hormones. It all comes back to Daniel, doesn't it?"

"That's because he's a fucking traitor who infiltrated our system—"

"No, I'll tell you why. It's because you can't just face the facts and admit the truth, can you?"

"_Me_? No, _you_ can't deal with—"

"And you know what that truth is, Griffin? The truth is that you're jealous of Daniel and you can't deal with the fact that you fucking love me!"

I wasn't actually being serious, of course. I was just blabbing and trying to make him mad. I mean, this was Griffin O'Connor. He loved no man and no thing and nothing and no one. He barely even loved himself.

But then, after a very long silence – where I thought he was about to start laughing hysterically at my stupid attempts to rile him up so he'd fucking forget about Daniel (because, really, enough is enough) – he sighed wearily and mumbled, "Well, fuck. I thought you were unconscious for that part."

And that's the exact moment when my world stopped making sense.


	26. In The Dark

**A/N: **So this is dedicated to my new friend Charlie Hartley, because she specifically requested me to update and pestered me with like three thousand messages and didn't stop, like omg—

Just kidding. :)

But no, seriously, Charlie Hartley, hope this made the year better. ;)

In other news, it's my birthday Friday! Woot woot! I'm about to be seventeen. (I can barely even say it. I liked being sixteen too much to turn seventeen...) I feel like I'm getting old, but whenever I say that, someone nearby just goes: "HA! Just wait until you get to 63!" (Someone, AKA my parents...)

Sensitive people be warned: there is stuff. In this chapter. Not stuff stuff. I do not describe anything. I just mention that something happened and the aftermath. Since this moment is pretty crucial in the story, I decided to go ahead and put it in, but I left out anything that was... well, extraneous or unneeded. Such as lemons.

But yes! Please please please send me a review, make my birthday awesome! :)

Hope you guys like the chapter!

**Chapter 26 – In The Dark**

Well. _That_ was awkward.

I found myself desperately hoping that if I flipped on a light, I would see him trying to contain his laughter at my stupidity for almost believing him, but I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't have, so I didn't reach for the light at all.

What the fuck did he mean, he thought I'd been _unconscious_ for his declaration of undying love for me?

(Well, obviously he hadn't said undying, since that was a bit too much like a Disney movie and so totally _not_ like Griffin at _all_, but still—)

His voice came out of the darkness again.

"Em?" He asked, and if I hadn't known Griffin as well as I did, I would have thought he sounded nervous.

The idiot.

I didn't know what to do. Honestly. What the hell was I _supposed_ to do? I did the only thing I knew _how_ to do.

Well, the only thing I knew how to do other than kicking his ass to high heaven for bursting into my room at night and declaring his – weird, slightly upsetting completely unsettling, definitely unexpected – love for me: I reverted back to being a smartass.

"Well, Griffin, I have to admire your absolutely _brilliant_ timing. What, did you realize that I really wasn't so bad after I _died_?"

"Don't be a bitch. It's not like I _wanted_ this to happen. Actually… you know what, just fuck off."

"You _are_ the one in _my_ room, _not_ the other way around." And then – thankfully – I remembered exactly why we were fighting (and how he had started confessing his love) in the first place. "So _why_ exactly do you think Daniel's a paladin?"

"Because I found his paladin badge in the lab where he doctored up your cure."

What the fuck.

"Griffin. Why the fuck didn't you just say you had proof?!"

This time, I did reach for the light, but when it flicked on and I saw his face, suddenly I just didn't really feel like talking about Daniel anymore. There was a slant to his eyebrows and a resentful glint to his customary scowl that wasn't usually there. I mean, Griffin had been angry with me plenty of times, but I couldn't remember him ever resenting me _openly_.

Well, he had a shitty way of showing affection, didn't he.

Nobody had told me they loved me since Andy had died. I'd forgotten what it felt like. How risky it was. But no matter how much I shied away from commitment, no matter how determined I was to not get attached, no matter how certain I was that it was a complete disadvantage to care about someone—

Turning the light on had just literally _forced_ me to confront the fact that this was _Griffin,_ damn it all, and not just someone who was unused to the trials of fighting paladins. Griffin was more like me than I cared to admit and he had the battle and emotional scars alike to prove it. He was the only one who would know why I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. He was the only one who could sympathize. He was the only one that I really, truly trusted.

And I also couldn't forget the fact that my relationship with Griffin was not something to be handled lightly, even if it practically didn't exist. We had been thrown together by necessity (and his general unwillingness to move his ass from my sofa) and somehow ended up here, not knowing exactly how to function without the other around.

This was _Griffin – _for fuck's sake! – this was _my Griff_, and I didn't have a fucking clue about what I was supposed to do now that I knew that I meant something to him.

_What was I supposed to do._

"Griff, I—" I started to say, but he cut me off by thrusting the badge into my hands. I turned my attention to it for lack of knowing something better to do or say.

It looked very official. There was Daniel's name, Daniel Martin, but with a Ph.D under it instead of just a Bachelor or Master degree like he'd led us to believe, and above that was the very official sounding name for one of the main paladin bases.

Daniel was a spy, evidently.

Well, _that_ explained the weird looks he had given me sometimes. The look that seemed to be checking if I still liked – if I still _trusted_ – him. As if he really had replaced Griffin and I had actually started to trust him.

_As if. _

"Son of a bitch," I muttered, grimacing. "His picture is one uglyass—"

"You're taking this bloody calmly," Griffin interrupted, his eyes narrowing slightly as I glanced up at him and then back down at the badge.

"I'm a little surprised. And a little worried about how much he knows about the plans we've been developing. But I never trusted him in the first place. I don't trust any of them, Griff."

"You could've fooled me," he grumbled, but didn't say much else.

It was kind of awkward – _really_ awkward – just standing there, staring at Daniel's badge so I wouldn't have to look at Griffin, not knowing what else to say or do. And Griffin, for his part, crossed his arms and just stood there, like he didn't realize at all how _awkward_ this all was.

It wasn't even fair. He didn't have any idea of what circumstances were uncomfortable for other people. It was like he was socially retarded—

Well. That _was_ a fairly accurate description of him.

"Em—" He sighed, and I finally looked up from Daniel's badge.

"Hm?"

"It's not like _this_ is anything fucking _new_." He gestured rather emphatically with his hands and then crossed his arms again. Stubborn bastard. "I mean, for fuck's _sake_, I _took care_ of you while you were _sick_."

"...Oh. You didn't do that because you didn't want to lose my shining personality?"

He rolled his eyes at me and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"You fucking idiot."

I (really having _no idea_ what else to do, as I have already mentioned), extended my arms for a reconciliatory hug. I'd heard of people doing this – embracing each other? – and Andy had used to do it to me after I'd done something impressive, amazing, or downright kickass, but...

I don't think he knew what I was doing. Either that, or he intentionally did something that I was completely not expecting, just because he knew it would fuck with me and my stupidity.

He leaned into it, _leaned into_ my sad excuse for an "embrace," turned his face to mine, and found my mouth with his, parting my lips with a long, sultry, and ultimately so-not-Griffin kiss, as if he hadn't just called me – what were his words? Oh, right – a _fucking idiot._

But you wanna know the really sad part, the part that made me realize that I really _was_ a fucking idiot?

I didn't stop him. I didn't have the strength. I wanted it too much.

My arms clinched around him as his slid around my neck and pulled me into his familiar, warm body, matching each of the crevices and slopes of his torso to the shapes and curves of mine. His breath came hot and heavy on my lips before he kissed me again and I swear to God, I swear to God that my heart skipped a beat. And that's when I knew that I was _gone_.

And that's the last thing I really remember about it all. I mean – yeah, I remember other stuff (stuff that is quite good to remember, if I might say) but I don't remember really _thinking_ after that moment.

Now that I think about it, I really shouldn't have been so surprised when I woke in my bed naked and perfectly happy. Like, really. Of course I was happy. Griffin was laying right behind me, just like old times, except I was well and not sick anymore and—

Wait.

I was _naked_.

I was naked in a bed with Griffin – _naked_. In a _bed_. With _Griffin_ – even _after _I'd decided that I was made to make war on paladins, not have relationships with people that were equally as damaged as I was, putting myself at risk of getting hurt unnecessarily.

And of course the first question that popped into my head: was he naked too?

I peeked.

He was.

I'd already known the answer to that. I mean, I _did_ remember. I remembered everything, actually. I just assumed when I woke up that it was a really weird, crazy dream where—

Well.

Yeah.

Let's just say I thought it was a dream.

The second question that popped into my head, immediately following the first one: what the hell had I _done_?

(The answer was obvious, but still.)

I'd been _determined_ to not mess things up – _determined_ to not get attached or to not let things get messy, absolutely _determined_ that if he died, I was going to be okay because I wasn't in love with him and I hadn't slept with him and I hadn't shared the inner emotions and fears and secrets and stories I had buried inside somewhere that I'd never shared with anyone—

I'd been determined to just _not care_.

And that moment, when I woke up in his arms, warm from the heat of his heart and happy because I was there and not anywhere else in the world—

That entire checklist – the one of how to not care when Griffin died? Yeah, that one... – was all _screwed_.

So I guess you understand now what I mean when I say – _what. The hell. Was I. Supposed. To. Do. _


	27. The Knee in the Groin

**A/N:** Quick recap (of like the entire story): Andy and Griffin fight paladins. Andy formed a gang of Jumpers to help fight the paladins. Through a very emotional and private scene, it came to light that "Andy" is actually the name of Andy's Jumper brother and she took on his name after he was killed by paladins. Daniel turned out to be a spy. Andy and Griffin had sex.

Also, I apologize for the length of time it took me to update. I logged in today (after like four months) and I realized when I looked at my stats that I still have readers, some of which have followed all of my stuff for four years, and how ungrateful for their support I was being for neglecting my story for so long, writer's block or not. So I'm sorry, really, truly, very sorry. I'm a jerk. And I want to let you guys know how much it means to me to have an audience, whether or not you stick around after I finish this story (which I will quite soon, I promise), or even if you've stopped caring about this story. You did once, or you wouldn't have read this far, and I'm sorry that I've let you down.

**Chapter 27 — The Knee in the Groin**

Things were quiet for a few weeks after that. Griffin was oddly normal, carrying on like nothing had happened, and I followed his cue quite happily. It wasn't comfortable — not by a long shot — but we both had space — galaxies of it — and I had time to pretend that I didn't care about any of it or him. Both of us being so fiercely, claw-your-eyes-out independent, it was probably for the best at that point.

Raids were still going out. Sometimes they found useful information, sometimes they didn't. The paladin force was dwindling slowly, and while they still outnumbered us five to one, we were winning most of the skirmishes.

Griffin insisted on joining the raid parties a few times, when there was a lot of large guards guarding the facilities we were raiding. He was, needless to say, very useful when it came to dispatching said guards, and not half bad at sniffing out where any useful information would be.

He found some old documents, from back when they typed up and printed the reports. A paladin agent had taken my brother's name. Griffin thought I should see it: he seemed a little worried, kind of tense.

But I wasn't prepared for it, for any of it.

I'd assumed that one of the paladin bastards had taken my brother's name as a sort of code name, so any overly interested Jumpers — at that point, it was just me, Griffin, and three others — wouldn't be able to trace their names back to their families. Which is absolutely ridiculous, because we might be paladin killers, but we wouldn't kill children or hurt people that had never tried to kill us or end our lives or hurt us in any way. Unless they had, in which case, obviously they'd have to pay for it. But—

I never expected it. I never saw it coming.

I didn't know how to react when Griffin told me.

I didn't do anything, really. Not immediately, anyway. I didn't cry, t didn't slap him, I didn't have to sit down, I didn't have a panic attack: to be quite honest, I just stood there and waited for him to tell me it was all a joke and never mind, my brother wasn't alive after all.

Actually, my first distinct thought was that Griffin must be an idiot if he actually thought my brother _was_ still alive and if he really was, what a twist _that _would be in the story of my life.

My second thought was that Andy was definitely still dead. I mean, last I'd checked, nobody had discovered how to come back from the dead as themselves. As a ghost, maybe. But not as themselves. Unless they'd resurrected him, kind of like Frankenstein and maybe that was why the paladins carried around those tazers, the electric sticks of pain-

I don't remember much of the conversation between me and Griffin. It was a jumble of disbelief, references to my brother being dead in past-tense verbiage, and — eventually, once the news had soaked in — demands to see the proof.

Griffin handed me a badge. Yet another badge for proof. Why couldn't paladins have paperwork that proved someone was a spy or such—

And there he was. In a picture on a paladin badge with his name plastered all over it — that was odd, wasn't it? That they would use his real name - but it was his face. Aged. He wasn't a teenage boy anymore, of course: his cheekbones were more defined, his eyes clearer, his mouth leveled. His nose didn't look quite so misplaced anymore.

But he was still unmistakably my brother.

He was alive.

Now that I look back on the events of that day, I wish I had done something differently. I wish I hadn't tried to go charging off to find him.

And, most of all, I really wish Griffin hadn't tried to stop me.

Since our whole _ordeal_ - the waking up next to him thing - we'd maintained a strained normal. We weren't necessarily as close as we were usually, but we didn't completely block each other out like the last time. I mean, I wanted to be a big girl about this. It wasn't like I was inexperienced — hardly — I just never associated the act of sex to an emotion or a relationship before, especially not someone I cared about even remotely.

It was dangerous.

So, yes, we were talking. But when I lunged for the badge in his hand, when I tried to see the name of the base clearly, when he dropped it and reached for my arms, trapping them against his body and trying to hold me still so he could talk to me and calm me down and make me see reason, well—

I really shouldn't have head-butted him.

Or tried to, anyway. It didn't work so well: he saw it coming. The bastard knew me better than I was counting on, but I should have calculated that into my well-thought out plan — sarcasm — to get free and go find my previously-dead-now-alive brother.

But Griffin _kept talking_.

He told me then that it would be suicide to go in there, that we didn't know anything about him, about Andy—

At which point I head-butted him again. This time I succeeded.

He let me go and stumbled back a few feet. I was a little — a lot — mad, because if I'd heard him correctly, he'd just insinuated that my brother could've been working with the paladins, and I didn't care who he was, but _nobody_ insulted my brother.

So then I kind of kneed him in the groin.

He really should've known better than to say stuff about Andy.

Looking back now, I might have been over-reacting a little bit. Griffin really didn't mean it as an insult. And I really did feel a little guilty when I bent over him — he'd fallen on the floor: his face was as red as a strawberry because he was having difficulty breathing — to grab my brother's badge out of his hands, but the feeling passed soon enough.

I had to find Andy.

_I had to find Andy._

It was too bad that I'd just temporarily crippled my partner in crime, the one who'd discovered everything I knew about Andy's whereabouts.

Kneeing Griffin was looking more and more like a bad idea the further away I got from him.

I knew that I couldn't do anything until I'd found Andy, figured out why he had a paladin badge, and how important he was to them, and why he was there in the first place. And it wasn't going to be easy to do alone. I couldn't trust any of my gang, not after the revelation about Daniel.

So I did a one-eighty, walked back to where Griffin was catching his breath — still on the floor — and I held out my hand to him to help him up. He looked up at me, still obviously in pain, and rasped: "Go to hell."

I didn't blame him.


	28. Hey Tiger

**Chapter 28 – Hey Tiger**

Scouting for information had always been boring, but I didn't realize exactly how boring it really was until I had to go without Griffin there to annoy me and amuse me and poke fun at me and make me laugh and make me really, _really_ irritated.

It was exhaustingly boring.

But I found Andy.

He was stationed at one of the larger paladin bases in South America. From what I could tell, he was one of the higher officers. Wherever he went, he knew everybody and everybody knew him.

There had to be a reason that he was a paladin now. There _had to be_.

But there was something wrong. I didn't have anybody prodding me and telling me to ignore my instincts because sometimes my instincts were wrong and I had to trust my head and _screw this, because you just have to think about this, Em, actually think for once. I know your brain's a little slow sometimes, but please try to use it anyway_—

I needed Griffin. I needed him to not be mad at me anymore, to help me, to counsel me about who was fake and who wasn't and who I probably shouldn't trust and what seemed unrealistic and too good to be true. I was too impulsive without him. I _needed_ Griffin.

When I got back to the camp, it was dark outside, probably around midnight. Everyone was in bed except the guards on watch. I snuck into the main sleeping area, past the bunks of all the sleeping Jumpers — I couldn't jump because I wasn't very accurate in the dark — and I found the one bed that was separate from all the others, dragged away to the far wall, ten feet away from the other bunks. I crawled in, curling into the warm shape of Griffin.

He didn't say anything. I knew it wasn't because he was asleep, because it seemed like Griffin rarely actually slept. I could hear him breathing quietly and I could feel his heart beating, perfectly alert, a normal speed. He definitely wasn't asleep.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, and it wasn't until I said the words that I realized they were actually true: I _was_ sorry. "I'll try not to be a bitch in the future."

He stirred, shifting his weight to his side so he was facing me, even though there was really no point, since it was pitch black and neither of us could see a single thing.

"Good luck with that," he whispered back. "You're kind of a bitch all the time."

I smiled. If he was cracking jokes about my bitchiness, I wasn't going to have to work as hard as I'd thought I would to get him to forgive me. But he wasn't quite there yet and I knew what I had to do.

I leaned forward, slowly, trying to figure out where exactly he was. His breath whispered across my face and I knew where to go, finding his lips with mine and kissing him, softly, slowly.

He hadn't been expecting that. He jerked away.

"What are you doing?" He asked in his normal voice, forgetting to whisper. Somebody across the room stirred in their bunk. We froze. I didn't say anything: I just waited for him to decide if he was going to forgive me or if he was going to kick me out of his bed and pretend like nothing had happened.

There was a soft wrinkling of the air and then we were in _my_ bed instead of his, with the doors locked just like they always were and nobody there but us and this time _he_ kissed _me_, and his taste burned itself onto my tongue and made me feel slightly drunk and my breath started coming a little faster and it didn't take me very long to realize that I was trying to use his emotions against him as an advantage, but yet I was compromising my own emotions in the middle of it.

And I realized that when I was with him — in his arms, feeling his mouth on my skin, his taste on my tongue — I really didn't care if he made me vulnerable or not. It was scary to care about someone. Really, truly terrifying. I knew that he could be used against me or I against him. But in the end — well, we were both going to die eventually, so what the hell, right? What the hell.

And, to my surprise, it felt good — terrifying, yes, but good — to let myself care again.

When I woke up the next morning, he was already gone, and I got dressed and went to the kitchen to find something to eat for breakfast. He was there, leaning against a counter sipping a coffee. Our eyes met. I could've sworn he smirked at me. I had to duck my head to hide my own smile.

It was all suddenly very, very different.

Not to say we were suddenly different people or that it was all suddenly okay or that we were okay. On the contrary, actually. Within three hours we were at each other's throats all over again, arguing about which attack strategy would be most effective to break into the paladin base or whether we should at all.

He still didn't think it was a good idea to get Andy out. I still did, obviously.

Whatever happened when we fought, whatever we said or did, we didn't mention it again until the next fight. We would both storm off angrily and try to figure out how to convince the other to agree with our viewpoints, and then we would see each other again and it would be like we'd never really fought. That was just how it was.

He started sleeping in my room again, like he had when I was sick. We would lay there in the darkness during the night and we would talk for hours, or even just for a few minutes before I fell asleep. Sometimes we just lay there in silence. Sometimes I would stay on the opposite side of the bed from him and sometimes I would let myself find him in the blackness of night and we would curl around each other.

Sometimes I woke up to find him next to me in the mornings. Most of the time he was already gone. We had a silent understanding that he had to sneak into his own bed every once in a while so nobody suspected anything. I didn't want any spies to know we could be used against each other. After catching Daniel in the middle of his good doctor act, I didn't trust anybody anymore, not even my own Jumpers. Just Griffin.

But on those rare mornings when I woke up to find him next to me, I tried not to disturb him. As I found out, it was hard for him to sleep for long periods of time. Sometimes he had nightmares. I never asked him what they were about. If he wanted to talk about them, he would. In the meantime, waking up with him was almost peaceful. Like we were somewhat normal people.

It was one of those mornings when I woke up to find his arm wrapped around my waist. There was no way I could get out of bed without waking him up — he was a light sleeper, even when he got a good night's sleep — so I just stayed where I was and dozed for a little while. It was as near perfection as we could get.

He stirred, his eyes opening blearily. For a second, his mind was still in his dream, but then he focused on my face and he smiled sleepily.

"Hey, Tiger," he mumbled, stretching luxuriously.

"Hey," I said, smiling at the nickname.

He didn't say anything else, just rolled over and half-smothered me with his body. We had a fake tussle in the sheets and then quite suddenly there was a knock on the door and we had to get out of bed and act like adults, like fugitives, like we were at war.

I realized more and more every day what a bad idea our relationship was. In the middle of the Jumper-paladin war. We were the leaders, the targets. Anything could happen. And I had to remind myself every day that I didn't care about the risks, that I had to trust him to take care of himself.

Then again, I also had to remind myself not to kill him in the middle of one of our infamous fights, but hey. I was falling in love with Griffin O'Connor, the most irritating, trying, patience-testing Irish bastard out there. What else do you expect.


End file.
